Cody’s blog

I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan—I’ve read all the books and enjoyed them, but only once each. I’ve seen most of the movies, I think. I’m not even sure. I haven’t seen the latest one yet—will probably wait till it comes out on DVD, if then. But I have established sort of a tradition, starting with Book 5, of buying the books on the day they’re released at our local bookstore in town, Books & Crannies.

It all came about by accident. I hadn’t even read any of the books until I moved to Tehachapi. My first Christmas here, my brother gave me a boxed set of the first four Harry Potter books—all that were out at the time—as a gift. I sat down and read them all, enjoying each one more than the last. Although I wasn’t hooked in a fannish way, it was nice to have read them and know what all the fuss was about.

When Book 5 came out, it was purely by accident that I just happened to be in town and near the bookstore, and noticed the big stacks of books in front of the store. I picked one up on whim, just because I was there.

When Book 6 came out, I decided to do the same thing, and drove to the bookstore specifically to buy it on its release day. I wanted to read the book quickly, just to be part of the general excitement, and also to avoid spoilers as much as possible, since I knew everyone would be talking about it. (I didn’t enjoy Book 6 all that much—thought it was way too long and emo—but not being a major fan in the first place, I wasn’t all broken up about it.) I didn’t pre-order it, but the bookstore orders enough copies that you can just walk up and buy one.

So now, here we are, with Book 7, the final book, in the bookstores. I’m going to try to get ready here so I can leave for town around noon and stop by the bookstore on my way to work. We’ll have copies on the shelves at the library, too, or at least in the catalog—there were over 500 requests in the system when I checked last, so all our copies will probably bypass the shelves and go directly to holds. And, no doubt, people will be asking about it all day. But I don’t go to work till 1:30, so I should be able to miss most of the crush.

I don’t know if I’ll have time to read it tonight or not—depends on how long it is, and how determined I am. I’ve got my nine-mile run tomorrow, and I’m half-inclined to go see Transformers again while it’s still in the theater, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have tomorrow, either. But I’ll most likely get it done sometime this weekend.

As for yesterday, I didn’t get my second run done, which is no surprise, really. I ended up futzing around online till 11 am, trying to get my Yahoo page to work, and then setting up my Gmail to pick up my other mail so everything ends up in one place. I’m still not sure how well I like that yet, but I’ll give it a try for a while. I’ve got TV Guide TV Listings set up on a separate page. They’re ok, a bit ad-heavy, but at least they work. And I’ll hope that, by the time Yahoo dumps its old MyYahoo format and I’m forced to change or bail, they’ll have fixed some of the most egregious problems.

Anyway, after all that, I decided it was time to do some work, so I checked the oil in my generator—it was a bit low, so I topped it up, but it was still clean so didn’t need changing—then went up to Mom’s place to check the oil in hers. Hers was a bit low, and also quite black, so I changed the oil, and also checked the water in the battery and filled the gas tank, so she’s all set for a while. Since I was there, she made lunch for us, and we chatted for a while. I kept feeling fidgety, but I told myself to settle down and enjoy being with my Mom. We had a nice visit, and I promised next week to try to fix her electricity. I want to get a couple of golf cart batteries (they used to have them at Kmart, I hope they still do) or some sort of deep cycle batteries to use instead of car batteries, and also move the solar panel and battery charger from the shed to the house to use with them. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to do it—it would be nice to wire up both panels together, so she can have the charging power of them both, but I’ll need to study how to do that—but I need to get something done next weekend so she has lights at night.

After that, I finally got the solar mole chaser planted down by the shed. I dug a hole as deep as I could in the dry ground—which was only a few inches—then poured a bucket of water in it, and left it to soak in for an hour or so. Then it was soft enough to dig the rest of the way and put the spike in. I hope it works! Those gophers are really tearing up the ground under the shed and propane tank.

I’d considered starting on the weed-cutting yesterday, but it was too late by the time I finished my other projects. The only other useful thing I did was plug in the swamp cooler and try it out. It does put out nice cool air! I don’t think it really cooled the room down that much, but it felt good when the cool air blew my way. It was definitely cooler than just using a fan, and the extra humidity will also help my sinuses.

Look! It’s the Enterprise! Another photo from the Star Trek Experience.