Who the heck do I think I am?

We're leaving for Infinitus TOMORROW!

Leg one of our journey starts once I pack my car and go to A's house, where we will pack the car MORE and then drive to our hotel which is just south of Philly.

Leg two will be getting up Sunday and booking down to the other side of D.C. where we will catch the AutoTrain. Adventur! Train overnight in our little "roomette".

We will arrive in Orlando Monday morning and proceed to the Royal Pacific once we get our car off the train. We will have WiFi definitely in the hotel tomorrow night, but I don't know that we will on the train.

Then INFINITUS begins OMG.

This whole last couple days have been weird. Because of the intense heat I've been basically living in my bedroom instead of the front of the house (because here's where the A/C unit is). It's been surreal, only going out into the rest of the house when necessary. I've also been doing all the little things one does when leaving the house for almost two weeks: cleaning out the food gone bad (so it's not all even more STINKY when I get back) and all the packing that couldn't be done until I was done with the items going in. And dealing with all the last-minute stuff that we're dealing with in preparation.

And in the midst of this, pegkerr turned me on to this HILARIOUS blog on Buzznet: Mark Reads Harry Potter. I've caught up with his reading of SS and CoS and the 15 chapters he's read so far of PoA. They are hysterical. He's reading each book and blogging the experience, one chapter at a time, trying to remain as spoiler-free as possible - not easy when people spoil him in the comments. I really feel for him, about that, because the absolute charm of this project is watching him discover everything as a first-time reader who, remarkably, knows next to nothing about HP. It's great fun and needless to say his reviews are GOLD. He's fair when he sees a critical problem, but overall he's experiencing the wonder and the WTF and the OMG that is the first time through a series with this many twists and turns.

He apparently came to this project after reviewing Twilight in the same manner - and I'm reading that now. OMG, so funny. He totally calls Twilight for the POS that it is (I mean, really, it IS) and is HATING every chapter with more and more hatred. These are endlessly entertaining, folks.

Mark Reads Harry Potter - go all the way back to the beginning, it's High-freaking-larious.

Also, ABC Family is doing HP weekend again with previews and inside looks at HP&theDH, but I'm excited because at 11:00 I am going to watch MOOSE ATTACK! on Discovery. It should be all kinds of AWESOME. I mean. It's about MOOSE. ATTACKING! It's got to be cracktastic.

Maybe worth a second glass of wine. I think so, don't you?

(Oh and in other news my house got chosen to be a ratings family. I think. It just said 337, no unit number. I may have to take the paperwork with me and go online to file to make sure they don't want my landlord's unit instead of mine. Because fuck yeah, I want to be a ratings family!)

I'm being slightly crazy and driving home from Infinitus. I'll be doing the trip in 3 days: Monday, July 19 - Wednesday, July 21.

My plan is to make it somewhere between Charlotte and Raleigh, NC on the first leg. Then I can get to my aunt's in Philly on the second leg and home to Boston on the third.

So: Anyone in North Carolina want to host a Gwen on that Monday night?


Also - anyone coming back up to any of those locations who would like to ride-share? Since I'll be all alone on the way home....

First off, curling has to be the strangest sport ever. On the other hand, I love that there are sports for regular guys - John Schuster of the US, for example, looks like a computer jockey rather than an Olympian. I kinda like that.

Anyway, moving on.

grouchyoldcoot sent me a wicked cool birthday/Valentine's day present. And he was all apologetic that it wasn't a typically romantic present.

It's a wireless all-in-one printer, scanner, copier. YAYZ. I have been desperately needing a new printer! It's WAY better than roses or chocolates!

I had a little trouble hooking it up but I finally figured out that duh, I was using the wrong WEP for my network. Heh. Oops.

Anyway. It now wirelessly prints, but apparently one does have to connect the USB cable to scan documents. That's okay. The point is that it WORKS. Huzzah! I have placed it on the bookshelf next to the desk and now I need to decide if the other POS printer is worth keeping (probably not).

I still don't know just what happened to the HPEF all-in-one - I packaged it and labeled it to be shipped back after Portus, but it never arrived. Since that was really part of the package deal we got on the computer and the other stuff, it wasn't a huge financial loss, but it was a huge frustration. One of the downsides of having assets that have to travel all over the place.

Anyway. Others have blogged that Orlando was fun, very productive, and OMG, Hogwarts is going to be breathtaking! Lots of momentum, which I hope stays with us for some time to come.

Still unemployed. Still looking for the .1% of jobs out there that fit my criteria. But at least now I can print resumes!