Bow to death, Harry...

"Bow to it...It might even be painless...I would not know...I have never died." --Lord Voldemort

oooooooooohhhhhhhh...so sckawee! Me so sckayawd. ;) Hold me.

WHOOPIE!!! Its here! The day has finally come! I'm a proud nerd. (drum roll & trumpets) Dumm da-da daaaaaaa!

The Quidditch World Cup! Death Eaters! The Triwizard Tournament! Weasley's Wizard Wheezes! Dragons! Grindylows! Giants! Blast Ended Skrewts! And finally...bone of thy father, hand of thy servant and blood of thy enemy! Whatz that spell? (lemmie hear ya)

THE GOBLET OF FIRE!!!

Yeah....I'm pretty much wearing a cape tonight. ;) I'm that far gone. Erin is meeting me at 5 pm at my house and will then begin creating a realistic scar on my forehead (sans the burning thank you) so that people will honor and perhaps fear me in line at Crown Theater in Annapolis. I mean, that's the kind of thing that really gleans respect, people. Trust me on this.

I bought my tickets on Tuesday...haha. And on top of it, the first two shows I picked were sold out! So were going at 8:10pm. There should be plenty of freaks in line for this showing. When Erin and Heather and I went to get Book 6 at Harry Potter Midnight Madness a few months ago, we were VERY entertained to say the least, by people who take it waaaaay over the top. People dressed as elves, lots of makeshift scars, people wearing capes/robes and gold & maroon scarves with the actual Griffindor crest on them! Where does one even BUY that? (seriously...where? I, um, only want to know fooooor... research purposes!....er, yeah, that's it.)

So a good time is expected to be had. I want to know what you all (the 'enlightened' few who actually follow HP) thought of the movie afterwards! Comments please! And yessss, you are allowed to berate me for my lofty geekism on my own blog...only if its a good shot though. Be creative! "You're a nerd." will get no points! You will then NOT be awarded the Triwizard Cup, or the athletic cup, or dixie cup or any other cups or praise of any sort, thank you.

Have a great weekend!

Love and magic to all you muggles,
Your Royal Nerdliness....Mad Eye Moody Lee

Angels We Have Heard Are High

I, Laura Lee, of sound body and mind, solemnly swear to NEVER read an email titled "ANGELS!" Especially if it has the little attachment paperclip next to it. Case in point:

From: Anonymous for her own protection
To: Laura Lee
Subject:
FW: ANGELS!

That has "do not open me if you do not want to be instantly annoyed" written all over it. However today...I was curious. Why would this friend of mine want to send this to me? She must think that it has value to me. I must see what this is all about. Bad decision.

I see 8 of these terrifying angelabies (that's what I'm calling them: angels + babies = angelabies) bouncing on my screen at an eye rupturing rate, with this important message:

"8 angels r sent 2 u, u must send them to 8 people including me. in 8 minutes u will receive something u have long awaited. have faith!"

Ya know what? You ARE going to receive something you have long awaited. Another one of my blog rants. This is SO DUMB! And do you REALLY want me to send this back to you? I think if I sent this and got it back from (hold on let me count to see how many other people were forwarded to)...oh...8....duh. Anyway, if I got 8 of these back in my box with attachments it would actually stress me out! Not to mention fill up my inbox.

I appreciate that you thought of me, but unless you are speaking directly to me or its really funny or good, don't. Don't do it. For the love of God, please. For the love of Angels, please. The one exception to this rule is if you actually do see angels. Then you may title it "Angels" and if you happen to snap a picture of it too, you may attach it. However, I suggest you title it: "HOLY SH*T! I saw a real MF angel, LAURA LEE, you've got to see this!"

I leave you with another forward I got in my box today...for your forwarding pleasure. I figure if I post it on my blog, I've got the 7 people it's threatened me to forward to covered right? Wait...do at least 7 people read my blog anymore??? hello?

Subject: Dogs Savage Crocodile (be careful if you have a weak stomach - read text first)

Sometimes nature is cruel but there is also a beauty in that cruelty. The crocodile as one of the ultimate predators can fall victim to the kind of implemented 'team work' strategy which is possible due to the pack mentality and social structure of canines. See the attached and remarkable photograph courtesy of Nature Magazine - but not if you're squeamish!

space down...space down....space down (you get the point)

Now that was good. :)

Have a hell of a humpday kids...

Laura, and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

<--That's me. Actually, that's a little boy named Alexander. He's the main character in "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" by Judith Viorst. Nothing is going right for poor little Alexander on this particular day in his life.

From the moment he wakes up with gum in his hair, things just do not go Alexander's way. At breakfast, Alexander's brothers Nick and Anthony reach into their cereal boxes and pull out amazing prizes, while all Alexander ends up with is . . . cereal. The situation does not get any better at school, in fact it gets worse. No wonder Alexander wants to move to Australia! In Australia, everything is upside down, so maybe a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day can become a wonderful, terrific, really good day.

After school, Alexander encounters even more bad news when he visits the dentist and goes shopping for sneakers with his mother and brothers. And Alexander's father isn't at all happy with him when the boys visit his office and Alexander gets a little carried away with the new copying machine! This terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day is enough to make anyone want to go to Australia!

I loved this book as a child and I know my mother did too. It went right along with her sarcastic nature and her insistence that everyone on earth had it worse than I did, so buck up! Whenever something I thought was earth-shattering would happen, she would simply reply, "Awwwwww, sounds like you are having a terrible, horrible no good, very bad day." Even well into college...a bad day would elicit the same response from her.

So, mom? Bloggies? Let me just tell you: Today is one of those days for me. Today I woke up late (no gum in my hair but I wouldn't say my hair was altogether clean. I will leave it at that). I got hairspray in my eye, I fell down the stairs, I burned my hand on a 4000 degree bagel, I got fully dressed, only to find a ginormous hole in the ass of my nice black pants...and then I remembered; I'd brought home a slew of marketing materials from work to stuff at home last night that I needed to cart back into Washington DC!

I can't seem to get all my work done and I'm stressing, so I decided to bring it home. Last night I fell asleep with Errors & Omissions Liability Insurance brochures strewn all over me...drooling onto Eligibility Questionnaires galore. So, I had to pack up these heavy boxes and strap them to this crappy half-working dolly and then get down the steps and out the door. I'm a baby about doing that on my own, so I pouted a bit that I actually had to carry these boxes up and down the stairs, pack them, hoist them into my car, drive to the train station and then walk the distance to the station, down the stairs and back up them again. Ha. Little did I know, that would have been how it would have worked out had the process been flawless! So, get to the auxillary lot thats 3000 miles away from the station, and there's no parking :( Last week I parked on the lawn of the Knights of Columbus' lot (same one) and they left me a scathing note that was telling me what a piece of disrespectful crap I was for parking on their lawn after they graciously extend the use of their lot to commuters and workers, being that they are among them and understand. Thing is...the letter has no cursing, no mean remarks, nothing terrible. It just played on the typical Catholic guilt of a estranged member. Damn you Knights of Columbus! Damn you!

The note worked. I've felt terrible ever since and I couldn't bear to do it again! Especially since tonight they meet and they would likely catch me! ;) If it were a Tuesday, I'd have gotten over the guilt a lot quicker. I needed a space. So I pulled into a BUSH at the end and parked. I wondered how they would feel about the desecration of their bush (heh...I said 'bush') over the desecration of their grass? I didn't get to find out.

I lugged the big heavy dolly out of the trunk and onto the ground. I'm of course sweating at this point profusely. Luckily, all of the boxes have fallen off the dolly and the tape job I'd done was ripped off. I put it on the ground and start taping again. Then, I run to the train and I am hauling ASS. I don't want to miss the train...its the last one until 9:30am! Halfway through the regular parking lot, my boxes fall off the dolly and bust open. Now I've got brochures all over the ground, that I stuffed the night before. And? What could be a pretty bad thing to happen now? Yes...wind and rain. It's raining now and my brochures are now wet and blowing around. Then, I see the train pull up and then, pull away. I sat there picking up brochures, crying. Yes, I didn't care, I just cried. So I gathered what I could, went back and got my car, came back and picked the rest up and then drove in bumper to bumper traffic to New Carrollton to catch the Metro. That wasn't as bad, though I am fairly sure everyone hated me for the size of my enormous and haphazardly packed and mentally ill taped dolly. 10:10am I roll through the door at work :( Then the shit just hits the fan here.

I'm so tired and a wee bit cranky and I have a ZILLION packets to stuff. Waaaa! If anyone is feeling friendly and wants to help me tonight, I would be so thankful. :) Holla.

So anyway, this so far has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. BUT...things are looking up. I have leftover Chinese food for lunch. Mmmmm MSG. :)

Hope all is well with you guys. Check out a short version of Alexander's tale here: AATTHNGVBD I think he might of had it a tad worse than I did :) What do you think?

Treat-or-Treat! Baaaaaaaa!

Baa, baa, baa sings the little white lamby
Baa, baa baa is the little lamby song
Baa, baa, baa sings the little white lamby
Baa, baa, baa is the little lamby song

All day long he loves to sing
Loves to sing the same old thing

Just baa, baa, baa sings the little white lamby
Baa, baa baa is the little lamby song

Boom, boom, down in the barnyard
Down in the barnyard, boom

John wrote a blog that made me reflect on my Hallows Eves past, and I just had a revealing blogspiration and decided to come on and share. Check this out first… HALLOWEEN, by John.

Now…onto what I think! Weeeeeeeeee!

I agree! Halloween means FREEDOM through and through. It was that one night of the year where you didn’t have to prowl the neighborhood after dark in secrecy! At least for me (I was a bad girl). I loved going out trick-or-treating with my brother and sister and later, my friends. In fact, I KNOW my parents viewed Halloween as freedom as well and here's a traumatic short story to prove it!

The Halloween I was about 14 years old and my brother was 11, we'd planned to go as California Raisins, I believe. I might be getting my years mixed up, but I do recall a California Raisin Paper Mache costume theme that my parents had made for us, right around that time. They were crazy about Halloween, always doing an amazing job with costumes and decorations. Anyway, many might say that 14 is too old for trick-or-treating and Halloween and I would tell those people to bite me :)

So he and I were goofing off one afternoon after school, the week of Halloween, and we were getting into things we shouldn’t and boredom set in, and subsequently, so did mischief. Being the insane pyromaniac latch-key kids we were, we decided to make a homemade blow torch. Yes. You read correctly. A blow torch. I never said we were normal kids just because we participated in Halloween like the other ‘normal’ kids. We also smoked twigs and ate poisonous mushrooms from the yard for crying out loud! Well I did at least and might I say: Thank you Ipecac Syrup for saving my life so many times! We had Poison Control on speed dial. This reminds me of a brief tangent involving The Simpsons, that my friend reminded me of the other day and that is the time when Bart bets Homer $5 to eat the old box of baking powder out of the refrigerator (that came with the house) and Lisa preemptively calls Position Control and says, “Fran {Poison Control Employee} It’s me. Just a heads up...” haha That was our house. :)

So we gathered the appropriate items for making said blow torch, which were:
-1 half burnt candlestick
-1 antique copper candle stick holder
-1 bottle of Rave hairspray (pump)
-1 bottle of Aquanet hairspray (aerosol)
-1 box of matchsticks from Cantler’s Riverside Inn
-1 person to hold blow torch
-1 person to be chased by lit blow torch (this was not me)

SO…we placed the candle in the holder, lit the candle and tried the spray bottle of Rave first. Got some fire shooting for sure! WOW! This was great. But how do we get a STREAM of fire, was the real issue at hand? Welp, out comes the Aquanet. I decided it would be best to go OUTSIDE for this experiment, which I felt was very mature on my part really. ;) So I started spraying, he put the candle underneath, and BAM! As soon as it lit, he dropped the candle like a little bitch, screaming and I chased him with the hairspray shooting fire. Ahhhh good times. Also a perfect time for my mother to come home, and out onto the deck to see what my brother was screaming about and…well I got in a lil bit o’ trouble.

First she beat my ass (remember, I’m FOURTEEN!) with a plastic cooking spoon that over the years of beatings, she’d affectionately named, “The Hearing Aid”. She called this spoon The Hearing Aid because, if you weren’t hearing what she was telling your ass to do, you must need a hearing aid. So she whacked me on the ass with that several times, chasing me simultaneously. Damn if that thing doesn’t hurt when she gets you good though, oww! It doesn’t hurt as much though when she’s only getting you in bits and pieces because you’re running. She is running after you screaming, “Stop running or you’re REALLY going to get it!!!”

Ya know what? I had a feeling if I DID stop running, I was gonna get it anyway! When she caught me, she started smacking my ass with that spoon and was yelling, “Stop laughing! Move your hands! MOVE YOUR HANDS I SAID!” Naturally, I was covering my ass! Hello?! Who wouldn’t? She is a freakishly strong woman! Well I think this was the turning point in Lee discipline where she decided that smacking me with The Hearing Aid isn’t going to work anymore; I had to suffer on a much more adult level.

I waited in my hole of a room anxiously, while she thought of something terrible indeed that would punish me, yet that my father wouldn’t pick up on the fact I was being punished for fear that he would not hit me with The Hearing Aid had he found out, but rather he would likely have snapped the end off and stabbed me in the heart with the jagged edge. Then he would have probably burned my remains with what was left of my blow torch. It was just “his way”, bless him. So she was faced with handing down the ultimate punishment, but still having it be unnoticed by the tyrant ruler for fear that he would in fact take me from the earth and, can I just hypothesize for a moment and say that this just proves that she liked me after all? ;)

SO, she asks me to come up with my OWN punishment. What did I think was fitting? Well naturally, my first response: Punish Chris. It was his fault really. I was naturally trying to STOP HIM from this pyromaniac behavior, but was overpowered by my 11 year old brother. She vetoed that. I was older, I should have known better (or some hooey). If I had a dollar for every time I got punished as a message to others, mmmm boy, I would be living in those condos across the street from my work building on 23rd and M Street and then I could crawl to work…in my Dolce and Gabana suits. ;)

So my second runner up suggestion was that I should be forced to clean my room and not talk on the phone that night. NO. Apparently fire is a big offense. So I suggested that maybe I rake all the leaves in front yard. NO. Apparently I was going to be doing that anyway. Life is one big punishment when your parents give birth simply to have slave hands. Ok so that’s an exaggeration. So she decides I’m doing a shitty job of making punishments and hands down a sentence of ‘No trick-or-treating this year”. I couldn’t go out on Halloween, and not only that, I couldn’t give out candy, have my friends hang out on the porch or near the house or even come out of my bedroom. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh the horror!!!! Ughhhhh! :(

OMG this was terrible. Was she for real? Guess what? She was. :( I stayed home that year. I snuck out of my bedroom window later that night to meet my friends after midnight, but that’s not the point here people. ;) The point is: WTF kind of cruel and unusual punishment is this? One that worked I surmise. Revoking my freedom meant that I never set a fire (intentionally) again until recently when my friend Dave and I tried to make a blow porch on the back deck while Nikki was away in San Diego, and it was just so I could reminisce about my childhood, so I’m considering that “therapy”. Not to mention, I think he was grandly intrigued not by the moral of my story but rather, would this actually WORK?! It didn’t work by the way. I think that the new aerosol cans are low pressure or contain less alcohol or are “environmentally ozone safe” or some silly shit and it just didnt work. ;) Kudos to him though for giving it a whirl with me. Brave boy, Brave boy indeed. Fortunately I think he rather enjoyed the beating he sustained later from MY homemade Hearing Aid but that’s another blog altogether now isn’t it? ;)

So YES JOHN…Halloween is synonymous with freedom. As a side note I would like to tell you a wee bitty bit about a little thing I like to call KARMA (endorsed highly by Carson Daily). That year, Chris did get to go trick-or-treating and some bad boys drove up behind him and his friend and stole his entire pillow case (yes we Mago Vista kids don’t f*ck around when it comes to massive amounts of candy, we lived in a huge community!) and swiped his bag, poor little fire-loving soul. The whole bag…how sad. :( I wonder if he’s worked through that emotionally yet? Hmmmm Anyway, I wasn’t happy to hear it had happened although it was GROSSLY unfair that I was punished and he, my lab assistant, was permitted to “do the Grapevine” all the way through Spriggs Cove Community. Mainly I wasn’t happy to hear it had happened because this meant that NOW I had to steal candy from ERIN! And she was slow and prissy! This is NOT a good combination of handicaps when it comes to successful trick-or-treating! Here was a kid who was always dressed as something princess-like and had ZERO concept of Halloween time management and trick-or-treating strategy. Plus she was 8. Plus she was the baby. I wasn’t getting away with taking her candy dammit! Chris was my only hope for diffusive theft! I don’t really know what became of Chris’ Halloween bag fiasco, but I doubt he went without candy that year. I certainly didn’t. Though I believe I was a bit more into Beast Lite at that point anyway. ;)

The second part of this follow-up is a little concept I liek to call: deterrence and rehabilitation. I, having been SERVELY punished, never made fire again (intentionally) until I was unnaturally coerced by Dave (who was a bad boy from Brooklyn Park). CHRIS on the other hand, later burned down ALL of Schooler’s Pond (a natural wildlife preserve mind you) and all of the marsh and brush surrounding the area at the end of our road. My mother, being sound of mind as we all know she is, decides that the best measure here is to cover up the entire incident for when the authorities get involved. Remind me to commit my next crime with HER around. So yes, Chris never broke his obsession with fire, and I did. So THANK YOU MOM! I think…

Ok bloggies, I hope you liked that sad little tale. Today (All Saints Day for all you Catholics), I am still suffering a candy hangover having eaten 5 pieces of chocolate within 10 minutes of having arrived at home last night. I blamed it on my shaky nerves. Thank you Nikki for jumping out from behind the couch with a terrifying devil mask on when I arrived at our front door last night. Had I been like the little Harry Potter wizard look alike that was 10 steps behind me (wand included) I might have been able to get out a good, “STUPIFY!” But no such luck. By the way…all the mothers in our community now loathe Nikki for scaring their small children with that mask and laughing like a maniac whenever she achieved the proper level of utter terror from a 4 year old little girl in a Snow White costume. Good work Nik.

I’m off. Hope you all had a Happy Halloween! :)