HillaryGayle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hillarygayle) wrote2009-07-18 10:24 am
hillarygayle) wrote2009-07-18 10:24 am
I'M BACK!
I returned yesterday from the trip to Memphis. Oh goodness I am SO GLAD to be home, where my stuff is and my boys are. I'm comfortable for the first time in the week.
Yesterday after I got home, Bryan & Ganon & I went into town. We wanted to hang out, so we went to Barnes & Noble and parked at the train table. Ganon played happily, we ate pretzels, we drank lemonade. After a while we decided to take him to see Nana & Papa so we could go see Harry Potter: HBP, but the strangest thing happened. Ganon started to cry pitifully, saying he didn't want to go see Nana & Papa...he wanted to stay with Mama & Daddy. OMG. That has never freaking happened. We were stoked; so much that we decided not to go. Instead we went to the mall playground where Ganon ran & climbed & jumped with the other kids. But we had Nana's phone, and she had to come get it from us, meaning that Ganon actually SAW her...and then there was a meltdown when she had to leave.
Bryan & I decided that HBP was in the cards after all, and met up with my parents to give them an obviously sleepy Ganon. (This turned out in retrospect to be an awesome idea, because he had a very big potty success later!) Then we hit the theater for the 4:30 showing of HBP, which we both really loved.
jorajo says she thinks the lack of spark in the Harry/Ginny scenes is about chemistry. I disagree; I think it's about writing. Ginny is proactive, and they've actually showed that in this movie. Hermione demands to be shown the Advanced Potions book; Ginny walks up behind and just grabs it. Ginny flings herself at Harry at the Burrow when she sees him. Ginny has just been a lot more visible, as we saw in Order of the Phoenix. So it really irks me that she didn't get her big, in front of everyone, fly up in Harry's face with that "blazing" look on her face and just kiss the hell out of him. THAT is a Ginny thing to do, not some weirdly mysterious kiss in the Room of Requirement. Ginny isn't weirdly mysterious, and that's why Harry likes her. I feel that scene was flubbed as far as writing, staging, characterization. Everything. I actually liked the scene in the field outside the Burrow where Harry & Ginny fought back to back. She literally jumped through fire to follow him into a dangerous situation. THAT'S Ginny.
Why was Dumbledore not buried with the wand? Isn't that kind of, oh, a MAJOR PLOT POINT in book 7? Also, it's HBP when Harry sees the memories that make him believe that the locket, the cup, the diadem, etc are all horcruxes. How are they going to work those in?
I liked the "dark magic leaves traces" comment in Dumbledore's office, most especially because of a subtle bit of acting on Mr. Gambon's part. When he said that line, his eyes widened just slightly and he looked at Harry in a very fleeting moment of startlement. It was as if he'd had his Horcrux Theory confirmed, and suddenly, horribly, it hit him that HARRY was a Horcrux.
The exchanges between Snape & Dumbledore were perfect. That whole thing was just as I imagined it in my head. The conversation, the "you ask too much", the "Snape, please", the loathing look and the casting of Avada Kedavra. So perfect.
Lavender Brown could not have been better. If it's possible, her casting & her acting were even more true to the book than the Snape/Dumbledore exchanges. My whole life was made when she said "Won-Won". And Ron's triumphant Quidditch moment was SO GREAT. Bryan & I were laughing and clapping when he made saves, and so was everyone else in the theater. I cheered out loud when Ginny made her goal (and thumped a Slytherin into a goal post, might I add?). I'm such a Ginny fangirl. I think it's the whole "I identify with this character" thing. She's absolutely my favorite.
They sure didn't explain the Half-Blood Prince thing. Snape just TELLS Harry "I'm the half-blood Prince" and leaves it at that. We get no explanation as to WHY he would call himself that; nothing about Snape's past. If I hadn't read the book already I'd be like "WTM?"
It's so weird to see Tom Felton's tweets, such a nice, sweet, funny kid...and then see him act like a completely perfect arrogant asshole Draco Malfoy. His long-term breakdown/freakout was really, REALLY well played, too. So was his mother's part at the beginning. I cannot wait for the part during the battle of Hogwarts when the Malfoys realize what's actually important and say "Screw you people, I'm gonna find my son!"
Daniel Radcliffe won my heart FOREVER when he drank the liquid luck. That bit of acting, that crazy flippant, half-drunk way he played that! IT WAS SO WONDERFUL! It was so entirely unlike the way he's been playing before, and you could tell he had such fun doing it. The part where he said "Might have something to do with the pincers" and then made a face and made pincers with his fingers, Bryan & I lost it completely.
After HBP, we went to Hiro. Hiro is a new Japanese restaurant in Jonesboro. Bryan & I had been praying and begging for it to be one of 2 things: 1) A sushi bar with "our type" of sushi, meaning unusual mixing of ingredients & spicy sauces, or 2) a place that had rice bowls (i.e. steamed rice with stir-fried beef or chicken or whatever on top). Anything but a tepanyaki grill, because we have 2 of those in town already. We were happy to find that while it does serve some tepanyaki stuff, they don't cook at your table, and the main focus is as a sit-down restaurant. They also have a decent sushi bar seating area, and they definitely had crazy sushi rolls. We had the Razorback and the Hiro. We liked the Razorback better, but it had one main issue: the fried oyster inside was very large and too crunchy--almost hard. It was a big roll, and that one hard spot on the inside, while providing a perfect contrast to the soft fish on top and the avocado inside, made the whole thing very hard to chew! It was literally difficult to eat the roll. Bryan & I started poking the oyster out & eating them separately. The Hiro was another very good roll, but it had avocado (both inside & on top) and cream cheese (inside). There was too much creaminess for the amount of heat provided by the honey sauce (a creamy sauce with a lot of wasabi) and the hiro sauce (a spicy mayo), both of which were creamy themselves.
Next time I certainly want to try the Harry Potter roll. It's soft-shell crab, asparagus, & cream cheese inside with seared tuna on top. If they could put some eel sauce on that for me, I think we'd be in serious business. Our waiter seemed to be heavily involved in running the restaurant, and he pegged us as sushi fans right away. He stood and talked to us a while about the types of things that we liked, and places where we'd eaten rolls like that. We told him that before, if we'd wanted sushi like this we'd have had to go to Memphis for Sekisui at least, and that we'd recently been enamored of Sake Toro in Frisco. I gave him a tip we learned at Sekisui: Sriracha hot sauce on certain rolls. We told him about the Fire Roll at Sekisui, and how each bit of shrimp tempura was topped with the slightest bit of Sriracha (rooster) sauce. He seemed quite interested, and I told him that if he made one with Sriracha on top he'd have to call it the Hillary roll, or maybe the Creecher. ^o^
We got Sonic drinks on the way home. For the record, their Mango Cool Breeze can be made into a cream slush and it's AWESOME.
Today the weather is DIVINE. Look at our highs for the next several days. It feels almost like autumn out here. I could just bask in it, but most likely what will happen is that we'll throw open all the windows & clean up this house. This entire year our house has suffered from my lack of time and motivation to really clean things up. Mostly I just clean things that have to be done, like laundry & the kitchen & bathrooms. Even the bathrooms suffer; I scrub the tub and the toilet because we use them often, but our bathroom cabinets are seriously icky. Anytime we've had people over I've vacuumed the carpet, and I think I might've dusted like 4 times in the last 12 months. Today I'd like to get some things done that haven't been done for a long time. I think I'm going to start with the bathrooms & the kitchen, and then move on to actually dusting & vacuuming the whole house.
Graduation is August 6. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Yesterday after I got home, Bryan & Ganon & I went into town. We wanted to hang out, so we went to Barnes & Noble and parked at the train table. Ganon played happily, we ate pretzels, we drank lemonade. After a while we decided to take him to see Nana & Papa so we could go see Harry Potter: HBP, but the strangest thing happened. Ganon started to cry pitifully, saying he didn't want to go see Nana & Papa...he wanted to stay with Mama & Daddy. OMG. That has never freaking happened. We were stoked; so much that we decided not to go. Instead we went to the mall playground where Ganon ran & climbed & jumped with the other kids. But we had Nana's phone, and she had to come get it from us, meaning that Ganon actually SAW her...and then there was a meltdown when she had to leave.
Bryan & I decided that HBP was in the cards after all, and met up with my parents to give them an obviously sleepy Ganon. (This turned out in retrospect to be an awesome idea, because he had a very big potty success later!) Then we hit the theater for the 4:30 showing of HBP, which we both really loved.
jorajo says she thinks the lack of spark in the Harry/Ginny scenes is about chemistry. I disagree; I think it's about writing. Ginny is proactive, and they've actually showed that in this movie. Hermione demands to be shown the Advanced Potions book; Ginny walks up behind and just grabs it. Ginny flings herself at Harry at the Burrow when she sees him. Ginny has just been a lot more visible, as we saw in Order of the Phoenix. So it really irks me that she didn't get her big, in front of everyone, fly up in Harry's face with that "blazing" look on her face and just kiss the hell out of him. THAT is a Ginny thing to do, not some weirdly mysterious kiss in the Room of Requirement. Ginny isn't weirdly mysterious, and that's why Harry likes her. I feel that scene was flubbed as far as writing, staging, characterization. Everything. I actually liked the scene in the field outside the Burrow where Harry & Ginny fought back to back. She literally jumped through fire to follow him into a dangerous situation. THAT'S Ginny.Why was Dumbledore not buried with the wand? Isn't that kind of, oh, a MAJOR PLOT POINT in book 7? Also, it's HBP when Harry sees the memories that make him believe that the locket, the cup, the diadem, etc are all horcruxes. How are they going to work those in?
I liked the "dark magic leaves traces" comment in Dumbledore's office, most especially because of a subtle bit of acting on Mr. Gambon's part. When he said that line, his eyes widened just slightly and he looked at Harry in a very fleeting moment of startlement. It was as if he'd had his Horcrux Theory confirmed, and suddenly, horribly, it hit him that HARRY was a Horcrux.
The exchanges between Snape & Dumbledore were perfect. That whole thing was just as I imagined it in my head. The conversation, the "you ask too much", the "Snape, please", the loathing look and the casting of Avada Kedavra. So perfect.
Lavender Brown could not have been better. If it's possible, her casting & her acting were even more true to the book than the Snape/Dumbledore exchanges. My whole life was made when she said "Won-Won". And Ron's triumphant Quidditch moment was SO GREAT. Bryan & I were laughing and clapping when he made saves, and so was everyone else in the theater. I cheered out loud when Ginny made her goal (and thumped a Slytherin into a goal post, might I add?). I'm such a Ginny fangirl. I think it's the whole "I identify with this character" thing. She's absolutely my favorite.
They sure didn't explain the Half-Blood Prince thing. Snape just TELLS Harry "I'm the half-blood Prince" and leaves it at that. We get no explanation as to WHY he would call himself that; nothing about Snape's past. If I hadn't read the book already I'd be like "WTM?"
It's so weird to see Tom Felton's tweets, such a nice, sweet, funny kid...and then see him act like a completely perfect arrogant asshole Draco Malfoy. His long-term breakdown/freakout was really, REALLY well played, too. So was his mother's part at the beginning. I cannot wait for the part during the battle of Hogwarts when the Malfoys realize what's actually important and say "Screw you people, I'm gonna find my son!"
Daniel Radcliffe won my heart FOREVER when he drank the liquid luck. That bit of acting, that crazy flippant, half-drunk way he played that! IT WAS SO WONDERFUL! It was so entirely unlike the way he's been playing before, and you could tell he had such fun doing it. The part where he said "Might have something to do with the pincers" and then made a face and made pincers with his fingers, Bryan & I lost it completely.
After HBP, we went to Hiro. Hiro is a new Japanese restaurant in Jonesboro. Bryan & I had been praying and begging for it to be one of 2 things: 1) A sushi bar with "our type" of sushi, meaning unusual mixing of ingredients & spicy sauces, or 2) a place that had rice bowls (i.e. steamed rice with stir-fried beef or chicken or whatever on top). Anything but a tepanyaki grill, because we have 2 of those in town already. We were happy to find that while it does serve some tepanyaki stuff, they don't cook at your table, and the main focus is as a sit-down restaurant. They also have a decent sushi bar seating area, and they definitely had crazy sushi rolls. We had the Razorback and the Hiro. We liked the Razorback better, but it had one main issue: the fried oyster inside was very large and too crunchy--almost hard. It was a big roll, and that one hard spot on the inside, while providing a perfect contrast to the soft fish on top and the avocado inside, made the whole thing very hard to chew! It was literally difficult to eat the roll. Bryan & I started poking the oyster out & eating them separately. The Hiro was another very good roll, but it had avocado (both inside & on top) and cream cheese (inside). There was too much creaminess for the amount of heat provided by the honey sauce (a creamy sauce with a lot of wasabi) and the hiro sauce (a spicy mayo), both of which were creamy themselves.
Next time I certainly want to try the Harry Potter roll. It's soft-shell crab, asparagus, & cream cheese inside with seared tuna on top. If they could put some eel sauce on that for me, I think we'd be in serious business. Our waiter seemed to be heavily involved in running the restaurant, and he pegged us as sushi fans right away. He stood and talked to us a while about the types of things that we liked, and places where we'd eaten rolls like that. We told him that before, if we'd wanted sushi like this we'd have had to go to Memphis for Sekisui at least, and that we'd recently been enamored of Sake Toro in Frisco. I gave him a tip we learned at Sekisui: Sriracha hot sauce on certain rolls. We told him about the Fire Roll at Sekisui, and how each bit of shrimp tempura was topped with the slightest bit of Sriracha (rooster) sauce. He seemed quite interested, and I told him that if he made one with Sriracha on top he'd have to call it the Hillary roll, or maybe the Creecher. ^o^
We got Sonic drinks on the way home. For the record, their Mango Cool Breeze can be made into a cream slush and it's AWESOME.
Today the weather is DIVINE. Look at our highs for the next several days. It feels almost like autumn out here. I could just bask in it, but most likely what will happen is that we'll throw open all the windows & clean up this house. This entire year our house has suffered from my lack of time and motivation to really clean things up. Mostly I just clean things that have to be done, like laundry & the kitchen & bathrooms. Even the bathrooms suffer; I scrub the tub and the toilet because we use them often, but our bathroom cabinets are seriously icky. Anytime we've had people over I've vacuumed the carpet, and I think I might've dusted like 4 times in the last 12 months. Today I'd like to get some things done that haven't been done for a long time. I think I'm going to start with the bathrooms & the kitchen, and then move on to actually dusting & vacuuming the whole house.
Graduation is August 6. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.