An update and the Half-Blood Prince

Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't read the latest Harry Potter book.

I liked Snape! For five books I have been defending him to my family and friends, saying that 'if Dumbledore trusts him then he's all right, even if he is mean to Harry'. What can I say, I watch German movies; I like the dark anti-hero type characters. I figured that he would do something cool and redeem himself by saving Harry (or something like that), and this happens instead! I feel kind of betrayed, but it's not like Rowling hadn't been giving us plenty of hints about this happening. But wow... I did not see this coming. /rant

Colorado was fun, even though that was over a month ago. I have my copies of Genesis's pictures, and I've stuck them in an album. I've written on the backs of them, but I need to do some scribbling on the album itself. Fun, fun.

I have a job now. I'm a cashier at the Penney's outlet, and I hate it. I can't wait for school to start again so I can quit. I sware, if I didn't need the money for Rome I would not have even applied.

On the other hand, I'm doing a bit of free lance writing for an ENworld contact. That makes me happy, even though I won't be able to go to GenCon this year. This isn't the the thing I was working on in Colorado. I did get that written and submited ontime, but I wasn't accepted. Oh well.

I'm still waiting on my rejection letter from WotC for my response to their open call last March. That can't be too much longer and it looks like they'll have another one this fall (an open call, I'm not hopping for a rejection leter) so if I can get something together I may give it another try.

OoE is coming along nicely. I'm still hanging around the battle scene, a further review of the manuscript reveled that we had missed a day somewhere in there. Fortunatly for me, that's Genesis's problem to sort out, I'm just working on what I've already got.

DC is on the back burner for now, and it's staying there until I finish OoE. Hopefully I'll be able to return to it soon, because I have some ideas about how I can rescue that sagging middle section.

As for my other literary goal this summer, Anne Frank has been returned to my bookshelf. I only got about half way through it, but I've read it several times before in English, and am familiar with the play, so it's not like I don't know how it ends. In exchange, I found a copy of Hundejahre by Gunter Grass at Half-Price books, and I'm going to read that instead. He writes interesting things, it should be thought-provoking if nothing else.

In another Half-Price Books purches, I found the first two seasons of Xena on DVD. Battle on!

And, to end this note on a downer, my Grandmother C-- died at the end of May. I flew back from Colorado for the funneral, which was nice. I got to meet a lot of relatives whome I had either never met, or else had last seen when I was a baby. Mom and the twins made ribbon birds like she used to, and we gave them out at the funeral as buttonairs. Her grave is in a real nice area of the cemetary: it's on a hill underneath some old oak trees that give good shade. My Great Uncle J--, her brother, brought some dirt from South Carolina where she grew up and we sprinkled that on her grave. All in all, we're doing OK, although Grandpa C-- is awfully lonely. Any prayers you can give him are appreciated.

Counting the days until school starts again,
Yami