Poem for Saturday

You
By Carol Ann Duffy

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head.
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamorous hell: the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger, ready to kill; a flame’s fierce licks under the skin.
into my life, larger than life, you strolled in.

I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone’s face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.

--------

Personally I had a pretty low-key day, but I am very pissed off about something that happened at Adam's school. He came home with the outside of his violin case cracked and smashed -- apparently a girl he barely knows had come to the instrument storage room to look for her instrument and ordered him to help her find it, and when he said he was looking for his own, she said, "You suck. Here it is," and picked up his violin and flung it against the wall. We have already called the school administration about this and I am waiting for the place we rent the violin from to tell me how much it will cost to repair/replace the violin case; we have insurance, but I'm not sure it's covered due to acts of deliberate negligence or abuse. I don't think I need to explain how angry I am.

Otherwise I wrote a review of "Shades of Gray" -- not my least favorite TNG episode, there are certainly a couple first season that I dislike more, but definitely the most poorly executed one -- and had dinner with my parents (a mix of various Asian foods: Pad Thai, teriyaki chicken, shrimp in some Hoisin-related sauce, steamed dumplings). My mother gave my kids these magnetic puzzles that they have spent half the night working on -- you never know what's going to interest them these days!

The Friday Five: LiveJournal
1. How long ago did you join LJ? Five years and four months ago.
2. How did you find out about LJ? Divineway told me that most of Smallville fandom was congregating there and offered me a code to join.
3. If someone introduced you to LJ, is s/he still on your friends list? She is!
4. Have you introduced anyone to LJ? Yes. I don't remember everyone I gave codes to back in the day when they were necessary, but I'm pretty sure Asynje, Ealgylden, Mama Dracula and various others.
5. Is your LJ public or friends only, and why? The primary journal is friends only as of the day my 14-year-old got his own LiveJournal. I have a public journal as well.

Fannish5: What are five questions you would like to ask the creator(s) of your favorite show/movie/book/etc.?
These are all for J.K. Rowling.
1. After Snape's ostensible death, he disappears from a narrative in which he's been a huge presence -- next to the trio, probably the most important character. No body, no funeral, not even a mention once Harry tells Voldemort that Snape was always Dumbledore's man. Was that to keep the spotlight on Harry? Did you have a problem with the extent to which Snape was a hero for readers even before the last book confirmed that he was one of the good guys?
2. What was the point of having Tonks and Lupin get married and produce a child, only to have them both utterly ignore the child and die? Where's Teddy supposed to get the strength that Harry supposedly got from his parents' sacrifice?
3. For that matter, why not have Tonks and Lupin fall in love like adults? Why turn her into a needy stalker and him into someone who wants to get away from her?
4. None of the Malfoys' or Blacks' motivations make sense to me. They are wealthy, powerful Purebloods in line to take over the Ministry or whatever else they want without a Dark Lord. Assuming that Voldemort never told Lucius about the Horcruxes, what did a half-blood have to offer such ancient and powerful families, if not eternal life?
5. Ginny worships Harry before she's ever met him. When she's a first-year, he's her savior in the fight with the basilisk. Unlike Ron, Hermione and even Neville, she's not a full participant in the final battle at Hogwarts. She's a pampered youngest daughter in a family full of brothers. Besides being a decent Quidditch player and bringing a big family with here, compared to Hermione or Luna or even Cho, what makes her a good mate for Harry in the long run?


The lump under the covers is me -- my husband took this photo of three cats trying to stake out space.


As you can see, Daisy has mastered the "I am disturbed!" glare.


Daisy has also managed to figure out the warmest spot is ON a person, not next to him.


The other two cats manage to make themselves comfortable sidelong nonetheless.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Exalted Highness Duchess Michelle Erica the Feline of Mousehole by Sea Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Watched both SGA and the SG-1 rerun afterward...SG-1 has been utterly enjoyable every time I have watched it (I really love Sam Carter) and I wonder why I managed never to see a single episode before last year. I thought Teyla was awesome on SGA but it wasn't one of my favorite episodes; a lot of the storyline seemed Star Trek-derivative, and the whole tone kept feeling like a Borg story to me. Spoilers: Poor Carson! And Rodney with worst bedside manner ever -- whose bright idea was it to let HIM tell Carson everything that happened to the real Carson and to Elizabeth? I felt terrible for him when he found out his mother thought he was dead, but in the end, I couldn't feel all that sad...he's not really Carson if he couldn't keep Michael from getting to Teyla, he's not even as Carson as Tom is Will in that TNG episode where Riker found out the transporter had cloned him. On the other hand, Michael is wonderfully creepy, the alien ultrasound is awesome and Teyla is unbelievably strong not freaking out with Michael.

SG-1 does the quarantine lockdown pretty well, but my favorite part of the episode unsurprisingly was the look on Daniel's face when he realized Jack shot him. I don't know enough about Anubis to have any idea whether this was a good storyline in that regard, but I liked Teal'c trusting Sam because he knows her and Sam overriding first the self-destruct, then the dialing sequence to the ice planet. Sweet.

Then watched Jimmy Kimmel so I could get a good recording of the "F***ing Ben Affleck" video, which is still the funniest thing I've seen all year. Bwahahahaha!