so there.

Andy says to me this morning, "So, basically, all you do is link to other articles and add 3 lines of commentary?"


YES, that's all I do. It takes too long sometimes for me to come up with something cogent about what's happening in Life, so I just record the news of the day and move on.

So Andy, just for you: (since you alone read this)

I am starting to come out of the fog following NBT and the subsequent mandatory July 4 celebration at our home. I have been emotionally and physically exhausted. Can't even sit to read books for very long because I fall asleep. I've been dealing with keeping the kids away from a grouchy, in-pain husband so they do not awaken his wrath, while striving myself to avoid same. Take your vicodin and be nice, or go sit in a room by yourself. sheesh. eggshell walking is no fun for anyone.

I have to plant a garden. Recognizing that we will be gone the first two weeks of September, prime harvest time. However, since we are planting the garden so late, it's entirely possible that nothing will be even READY until we return from our vacation in CO. In which case we'll have about 3 weeks of harvest and then a frost.

That last paragraph is riddled with fragments.

I have to make a beachy wedding cake for next weekend, so I need to find some palm tree looking things, make some chocolate shells and starfish, and find some metallic blue aquarium foil to cover a cake board. This needs to be done on the weekend, because next week I start teaching again and I want to have the externals done in advance of Thursday/Friday when I start baking.

My van is filled with recyclables from NBT - so there's 2 weeks worth of stuff in there that needs to go.

Meanwhile I'm sittin in my jammies, posting for the sake of posting. Blah.

6 days until Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince comes out. So I'd better bake that cake on Thursday so I can read the book on Friday.

My predictions: (partially based on seeing the back cover of the American edition)

1. There will be a death at Hogwarts. There's a Dark Mark in the sky above what looks like the Hogwarts grounds, and we all know that Death Eaters would shoot that into the sky whenever they killed.
2. Ron and Hermione will come to some sort of understanding. They are not the one/s killed.
3. Dumbledore will have to die - whether in book 6 or 7 I don't know. But he's the only one Voldemort fears, and Harry will have to come into his own by losing that protection Dumbedore gives.
4. There will be some sort of showdown involving Harry, Voldemort, and Snape. Snape will probably save Harry's life and/or vice versa. Snape and Harry will come to a cessation of hostilities.
5. Petunia Evans Dursley is a squib. Somehow or another she's brushed up with the wizarding world before, and not just because of her sister Lily.
6. Long shot - Harry becomes interested in Luna. C'mon, with a surname like Lovegood? Jo is Dickensian in naming her characters.
7. Percy Weasley is humbled and reconciled to his family.