alphasarah

We saw Half Blood Prince last night. It was really good. Really, really good. I still think Prisoner of Azkaban was better, but this was up there. Excellent performances from Jim Broadbent (Slughorn), Daniel Radcliffe (do I need to tell you who he plays?), Tom Felton (Draco), and Alan Rickman (Snape). Oh, and Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix), too, of course. Going through the movie you know they have edited it, but you don't feel like things are horribly missing. I had some issues with some of the changes they made, though, which I will detail below the cut for those who don't want to be spoiled for them. Also plot spoilers, but I figure everybody reading this has read the book already.

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None of this took away from my overall enjoyment of the movie, though.

I have no commentary except this:
HOW do I choose who should win in "Outstanding special class - short format live-action entertainment"?  I mean... Dr. Horrible vs. The Daily Show!  Who do I love more - Joss Whedon or Jon Stewart?  AUGH I can't decide!

Has anyone had any success getting their cell provider to block specific numbers from sending text messages?  M gets frequent txtspam, always from the same 5-digit number.   He has activated all possible blocking options and Verizon (shockingly) told him that they cannot block 5-digit numbers.  Their solution was for him to text the people back and request that they stop spamming him.

Yeah, like that's gonna work. He did it so that when the spammers strike again he can go to Verizon and say, "Really, that plan worked a treat, great idea boys. Now fix it."

... was brilliant. childsplay7 , T, and sprirtwolf got here a bit before 9 on Thursday night. We did not get moving quickly Friday morning between sleeping and getting everyone clean and going to the grocery store, but in the afternoon we went to the Botanical Gardens and then T cooked us an epic dinner (dilled salmon in pie crust, roast carrots & apples, roast kohlrabi and sauteed kohlrabi greens, and an apple pie for dessert). Saturday we went to the zoo and then for a walk on Elmwood and dinner at JP Bullfeather's. More staying up too late talking Saturday night and they left around 11 this morning to drive back to Boston. We all had tons of fun and I think sprirtwolf is TRex's new favorite person on the planet.

( photographic evidence )

Mostly for baronessmartha, from sprirtwolf and childsplay7 and me with love.
( simon's cat )

Note to self:  puffed wheat is way less filling than shredded wheat.  that + big swim + strong coffee + forgetting about lunch 'til 12:45 = massive caffeine-to-calorie imbalance.

In other news, my kid likes camping but wakes up waaay too early, and I have first-hand evidence that chrisilin  does, in fact, exist outside the Internets.  Later this week I will have similar evidence of childsplay7 , T, and sprirtwolf .

I have a lot of stuff to do in the next 4 weeks.

I have insomnia.

Insomnia -> doing some of that stuff.

Knowing people all over the globe means there is often someone you know posting something on the interwebs for you to read.

But now I'm going back to bed. 

 This is the best thing ever.  I am going to have to turn it off if I want to get any work done today.

It's been about 5 months since I started using the Autofocus Task/Time management system - I'm pretty sure I posted a link to it back in February.  I'm still totally loving it.  I've gone through a couple of permutations of how I keep my list - work and personal all mixed up, on facing pages, one on each end of the book.  Now I'm back to the barest-bones implementation of the system - everything all mixed up in one book.  I don't even keep track of dates except the date I started and closed pages, and I could probably ditch those too.

I won't say that I'm a million times more productive than I used to be using this system, or that I stick to it faithfully all the time.  It works at its best when you have a lot of unscheduled time and can make your own decisions about what to do when - in other words, pretty much my entire life.  There were definitely times in the last month when I was operating on near-crisis mode (summer school will do that to you) that I hardly used it at all.

Two common "criticisms" are that it doesn't handle projects very well, or items with urgent deadlines.  In fact, it handles projects perfectly well and very flexibly.  On the pictured pages, there are multiple entries for "LJ/FB paper".  I need to work on that paper, and I have a list of related tasks either in my head or written down elsewhere.  (In my case, stuff like that goes into Journler.)  Urgent items... well, it depends on your definition of "urgent".  I put things on the list as soon as I know they need to be done (unless it's something with a way-far-out deadline like the paper I want to write for next year's ASA conference, whose deadline will be somewhere around 1/5/10) and have not had a thing slip through the cracks.  Items with longer-range deadlines, or things that are time dependent go in a calendar with popup reminders; those reminders are not to do the item right then and there but rather to put them in my AF list so they can enter my consciousness.

The notebook, in case anyone is wondering, is a Picadilly medium notebook.  Do not love - I've been using it since Feb.; it's already held together by duck tape on the outside and packing tape on the inside and it's only 1/3 full.  Shell out the $$ for a real Moleskine if you're going to drag a notebook everywhere with you.

Last week C said to me, offhandedly, "we're going berry picking on Sunday if you want to come" and I said sure, thinking you know... an hour, maybe two, bring some berries home, and then later we could go play minigolf like TRex had decided we needed to for Father's day.  (Because Froggy does, you see.)

I forgot who we were going with. C had said that they were picking at 11 so I called her to find out the details at about 10. She said, "We're leaving in 15 minutes." I asked, "Where in the hell are we going that it's going to take 45 minutes to get there?" The answer, it turned out, was Coulter Farms in Lockport. Rather than her trying to give us directions, we decided just to meet at their house and follow them.  The plan was that B was going to meet all of us there having gotten there on his bike (the long way... because it may be far but it's not 60 miles from here to Lockport!)  It ended up being us, C&B and the kids, 2 sets of their friends (4 parents & 3 kids) and B's sister and her husband. We picked (and ate) oodles of strawberries and sugar snap peas, and ate nearly as many as we picked I think (like you do). And then we rode the tractor to another set of fields and picked and ate some more. All told I think we were at the farm for 2 or 2 1/2 hours.

And then it was decided that we needed lunch, so we followed C again, this time to
Brickyard BBQ in Lewiston, were fortunately there was seating on the patio because the five kids who were there were going a little crazy running around. We were there until about 3:30... TRex fell asleep in the car on the way home and M and I took advantage of the chance to get some major trimming of trees and shrubs done (including him up on the garage roof cutting back the neighbor's maple tree that was serving as an ant superhighway). And then we had salads for dinner, which included both strawberries and sugar snap peas. Of course.

I've had a recipe for "Southwestern Shrimp Stir-Fry" knocking around in my binder for ages. Finally decided to make it a couple of weeks ago. This is another one that the whole family loved & that is quite scalable. Also: extra quick (not counting time peeling & marinating shrimp: 15 minutes).

The recipe as written calls for 1.5 lbs shrimp, which fed us for 1 dinner with a generous helping of leftovers for me to take for lunch the next day.
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We had it with couscous and it was quite tasty. You could change up what veggies go in the stir fry for variety.

The scene: our living room.  G (who is 5) and her mom K are about to leave after a couple hours' playdate that involved dressup (master_mr , please let your lovely wife know that the mermaid costume from almost 2 years ago still fits TRex, more or less), playing with the dollhouse, and lots of running around in the sprinkler outside.

K: OK, it's time to go home now.
G: I don't like you!  I'm going to push you away from me forEVER!*
K: If you're going to freak out, we're not going to be able to have another playdate.
G: I don't care!  I don't like you!  I'm going to run away from you!
K: Can you wait to freak out until we're in the car please?

Gratifying both because G clearly had a good time and because my kid is not the only one who freaks out at the drop of a hat.  Hilarious because G's objections were registered using EXACTLY THE SAME TONE AND INFLECTION that TRex uses when she informs us "I'm going to throw you in the trash can!" and similar things.

Poll #1412658
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

A stuffed dinosaur officially named "Fidelisaurus" should most properly be called:

 No, I'm not abandoning LJ.

I did re-jigger my Twitter today, though, and as part of that turned off LoudTwitter updates here.  If you want to follow my personal tweets, you should follow @sarahmichelef (those have gone protected).  If you want to follow my academic/public interest tweets, you should follow @sarah_m_ford.

That is all.

 We lived the jet-set lifestyle and went to DC for the weekend - left on a 7:30 flight Saturday morning, came home on a 7:30 flight Sunday night.  On tap was Ethiopian dinner (advantage of mentioning things off-hand to the in-laws: they make them happen!) and the Children's Concert at the Kennedy Center.

Ethiopian dinner was at Meskerem, and it was fabulous.  Ethiopian is some of my favorite ethnic cuisine and we didn't have it in WMass and we haven't found it here, either (though I'm sure we could find it in Toronto and I will gladly drive an hour and a half for Ethiopian food).  We got a vegetarian sampler and then 2 non-veggie dishes (spicy chicken and then a sweetish shrimp dish) and everything was STUNNING.  They were great with TRex, too - she cuted her way into 2 hardboiled eggs (much to Opa's chagrin - M comes by his egg issues very honestly).  It should not surprise anyone who knows my child that she tried everything and ate most of it with gusto, no matter how spicy it was.

The NSO Children's Concert was cool but slightly disappointing from the grownup perspective.  The orchestra is of course amazing, as is the space.  (I have a great picture of TRex dashing towards Maestro Mouse past the bust of JFK.)  The programming was not as kid-friendly as I would have hoped; TRex loved the "compose yourself" piece where the audience got to vote on their preferred melody, who should play it, and the accompaniment.  There was a world premiere story piece for orchestra and one narrator/actress that needed to be about 10 minutes shorter if it was going to keep the four-year-old set interested.

We also managed to go and get manis and pedis for the adult girls (TRex has declared that she's going to get a manicure when she stays with Grandma and Opa this summer) and enjoyed our last chance to see Josh & Jacy before cousin arrives in July.  I took full advantage of my blanket permission to molest Jacy's belly at will and got to "hold" my niece's hand as she stuck it out at me.  At least I think it was a hand - it was the right size & hardness & location to be a hand.

On August 1, TRex and I will be at loose ends in Boston for the afternoon/early evening.  Who is going to come out and play with us?