Accio. Just let one spell work for me. That's all I'm asking. I just want to use Accio.

Life Observation: Getting behind on something makes it so much harder to ever start. (This is not, by the way, related to the following paragraph.)


Thank you to everyone for the positive comments on my last post! I am officially writing about Harry Potter, and I'm liking it so far. [SPOILER ALERT. If you haven't read all the Harry Potter books, you might find some generalizations about how the series ends, and you might be upset with me if you wanted to be surprised. So skip to the next paragraph.] I've narrowed down my topic to examining Harry and Voldy as metaphorical Philosopher's Stones; Voldy tried to defeat death (like the Stone which at least puts it off for a long time), and Harry saves his life and the lives of others. The factor in their success/failure is Love - Harry understands it and uses it, so he succeeds as a Stone. Voldy, on the other hand, doesn't value its power, so he dies. So he failed as a symbolic Philosopher's Stone. Poor guy. The neato part about this is that Poe and Hawthorne also show how love reflects qualities of the Stone! Poof. I have a thesis! I think the most difficult part may be deciding which book to use! =/ I want to use examples from all the books, but I've been told that's an undertaking for my dissertation - not my undergraduate thesis. And I agree. Tackling all seven books at once is a bit much.

Alright, it's safe for you to start reading again!

Tutoring writers who have... an unusual command of the English language can be extremely tiring. But then every now and then, I run across something so odd that I can't help but laugh (after the session, of course). Example A: "an unorthodox, impressionable, jealous feeling." Maybe my emotions just aren't sophisticated enough to relate to that. =)

That's right. I have commitment issues.

I'm in the capstone/senior seminar course for English majors, so I'm writing a thesis. On what, you ask? Ha. I laugh in your face. I've gone from very vague ideas to very specific ideas with moments of insecurity and panic in between. My most recent change has been from using A Room of One's Own + psychology of space to analyze Anne of Green Gables to using what critics write about alchemy in Poe or Hawthorne to examine alchemy in Harry Potter. A few days ago I was feeling awesome about this. It was going to be fun, something I'm interested in, and give some real literary credit to Harry (because he deserves it). Now though, like with all the other ideas I've broken up with, I'm doubting this. But I think I'm to the point where I need to buckle down and stick with it.

The problem, you see, is that I have fallen out of love with books and am still licking some wounds of bad writing experiences. So I'm scared of books and writing, and, uh, that gets problematic when you're an English major.

I am so looking forward to figuring out - again - what I like to read. For me. And pleasure.

I'm at the pharmacy, getting a refill.
Pharmacy tech: What's the name on that?
Me: Laura Morgan.
Tech: What's your address?
Me: -address-
Tech: Uh.. date of birth?
Me: -dob-
Tech: How do you spell your first name?
Me: l-a-u-r-a
Tech: Oh, I thought you said la-ruh.
Me: [looks at Mike and smiles, not knowing what to say]
Mike: She did.

I know this is my second post about this in a while, it's just been coming up a lot lately, and I actually thought this was pretty funny. =)

Clothes.

I'm assuming we either won't need them, or they'll be included.

I'm ready to not search and search for pants that aren't too long only to find the waist band expands enormously with each washing.
I'm ready to not search and search for shoes that fit (and don't have iCarly on them) only to suffer from painful blisters after a 15-minute walk.

C'est la vie en terre!
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Question for the ladies (or men..)Our house has a lot of old hardwood floor, and I'm not really sure how to clean it. Most of the time, I just sweep it and use furniture cleaner if we spill something. That's probably gross, but we're in the non-judgement zone, okay? =) It's fairly beat up in some places, so I'm not concerned about trying to make it last another hundred years, though I do want to be considerate and not use something that will ruin it since we're renters. I also don't really want to go buy some specialty product because we most likely won't have wood in our next house, much less really old wood (I think this house is older than the state of Oklahoma...).
I've read stuff about using tea, vinegar, or Windex... any suggestions? It's got some kind of finish on it (except for a few spots that have been kinda scraped).

Oh, and just to set some of you at ease, the bathroom and kitchen are tiled, so they get legitimate mopping. (Usually. I'm a busy girl, alright?)