I feel like I'm suffering from the cruciatus curse!

In case you haven't heard JK Rowling recently announced this new web site. And that's all she did - announce it. It's been like a howler heard around the world. She hasn't giving any hints as to what its about or anything. But, this is from the lady who kept the secret of Harry's destiny for practically a bazillion years when pretty much the entire universe was bugging her to spill the beans, so it's to be expected.

I'm really hoping it's an encyclopedia of the Harry Potter world, a sort of Hogwarts: A History type of thing. Or at least something to that affect.

I've decided JK Rowling is very cruel. We're (and by we, I mean the collective Harry Potter fan community who stuck with Harry until the end) already beside ourselves waiting for the final movie, and then she goes and does something like this! Does she not realize that the anticipation is boiling over inside me like a potion down in Snape's dungeon? She should lose 100 points for this outrageous act.

On the other hand, I feel like I've swallowed a mouthful of Felix Felicis and am in the midst of the luckiest day/summer of my life! The final movie and a new website that promises to be as exciting as the Quidditch World Cup! A bazillion points to JK!

I love summer

I think it's a newfound love, or maybe just a greater appreciation. I've always loved summer, but summer here in Provo is so different. It's full of friends, family, books, and sun. But I think this summer will be different because I don't have school looming in the future and I'm able to just relax and enjoy life.

The past couple days it has felt like summer is finally on its way, despite all of the crazy rain we've been having. And, this summer has the prospect of being EPIC. And these are the reasons why:

1. 7Peaks/Trafalga pass - I haven't bought it yet, but I will
2. Cruise in July with Brooke
3. No school in the fall
4. Provo City Library Summer Reading Program. It started today and I'm freaking excited about it.
5. We have recently discovered how many movies the library has and will be taking full advantage. Brooke, Jess, and I have already enjoyed Emma and Somewhere in Time and are looking forward to Nicholas Nickelby
6. I fully intend to get an awesome tan. Not lifeguarding and swimming status, but just enough to make me look alive through out the winter...
7. TacoTime. A new one just opened up down the street from work and I am obsessed with it. It is seriously my kind of place. They have mexifries (aka tattertots) and a Chicken BLT burrito. How can it get better than that?
8. Fourth of July in Provo. I don't know why, but Provo just knows how to do the Fourth of July.
9. Sandals
10. Shaved Ice stands on every corner
11. Light outside until 9:30
12. HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART II.

Doesn't that have the makings of an awesome summer?

Summer Reading List

Since I have officially began an eternal summer and I will be finishing Lost tonight (I have ONE episode left!) I thought now would be a good time to compile my preliminary summer reading list. I just saw on Facebook that the theme for the Provo City Library summer reading program is "Up All Night" which I am a huge fan of. Possibly because I often stay up all night reading and then make my way through the next day like a zombie. I really can't be blamed for this behavior. It's all my Dad's fault. He would take my books away at 11:00 so I didn't learn to self-regulate my reading habits. At least that's the story I'm sticking with.

But anyways...here's my summer reading list:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I've gotta get ready for the final movie!
2. Sense and Sensibility
3. Work and the Glory. I haven't decided if I want to reread the whole series or not, but I figure I'll decide as I'm reading it.
4. Secret Garden
5. Goose Girl and accompanying books that I don't know the names of
6. Mockingjay. Maybe. I want to see if it gets any better the second time around.
7. Undaunted. Actually I just want to finish this one. I still have about 100 pages somewhere in the middle because I NEEDED to know who ended up together at the end and may have skipped ahead...
8. The Healer's Apprentice. I really want to read this book, but I swear its impossible to find. So I may just have to order it from Amazon
9. The FitzOsbournes in Exile. I just saw this one on a library reading list and want to read it really bad. 

And we'll just start with that because my lunch break is over and I could go on forever.

Only one can live...

At open house in 6th grade my family went to the book fair. I've always loved stuff like that, you know, since I'm a problem reader. Well, I got this book there, it was called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Maybe you've heard of it?

I had seen my friends reading it at a class read and feed and thought it looked interesting so I asked my parents for it at the fair. At first my mom was hesitant, but finally gave in but said that my dad had to read it first.

And so began my obsession with Harry Potter. At times it has reached unhealthy proportions.

I think pretty much everybody knows I love Harry Potter, but I don't think they realize HOW much I know about it. I try to keep that on the DL. Because every once in a while when I slip up and people realized all the random facts and information I know about Harry Potter, I get really weird looks.

Anyways, to add to my weirdness, or coolness-depending on how you look at it-I saw the trailer for the very last Harry Potter movie today. And I got chills. I didn't even watch it with the sound (because I forgot my headphones today and the computers at work don't have speakers) and I got chills.

I'm such a weirdo.

But when the protective enchantments on Hogwarts start breaking apart and you know Voldemort and the Death Eaters are invading the school I just couldn't help it!

I've grown up with Harry Potter. I was 11 when I read the first book and 17 when the last one came out, so even though I wasn't trying to save wizarding-kind I could relate to Harry because we were the same age. And it seems so fitting that the final movie would come out the same summer I graduate from college. It's like we're passing into adulthood together, Harry and I.

Watch the trailer and tell me you don't get chills.

UPDATE: I just watched it again, but with sound. And it is AWESOME!!! I'm so freaking excited! Definitely got chills the second time around.

They took away my lanyard

Today was the last day of my internship. They made me turn in my lanyard. I was really disappointed.

Overall, my internship was an amazing experience. I learned a lot, met some great people, and had fun. I also really think it helped prepare me for my future career, whatever it ends up being...

Equally exciting as finishing my internship, I bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 on DVD today! I'm watching it right now and counting down the days until part 2 comes out!

This is amazing

Super cheesy, but I love it.

More questions

I know my last post was about Lost questions, but I just have so many more now! And they're plaguing my brain. Last night instead of just asking the questions as they popped into my head I saved them as a draft text message. Here's the list and my commentary, along with a few questions I thought of today.

1. Where/what is the black rock? You know its gonna be important. I picture it looking like the rock Harry and Dumbledore apparate to before they swim to the cave to get the horcrux.
2. What is making the light in the hatch? This is just weird and it creeps me out.
3. What does Claire name her baby? Charlie can't keep calling him Turniphead. Also they obviously used a different baby for each episode I watched last night. And it's super obvious when they're holding a doll instead of an actual baby.
4. WHAT'S IN THE HATCH? This is just weird and it creeps me out.
5. Does Kate have a baby? When I read John and Brooke my list of questions they laughed at this one and actually told me that she doesn't. It's officially the first question they've answered for me.
6. Where is Kate's husband?/What happened? Also what happened to Jack's wife?
7. Why is Kate's mom scared of her? What did she DO?
8. Why does Walt want off the island so bad now? Walt is weird. First he burns the raft and then Locke touches his hand and now he wants off the island as fast as he can. But it's ok, he's going to die soon. IMDB says he's only in 33 episodes and we're getting close to that. I think he's going to die in the season finale. Also it would be to hard to keep him in the show because he's going to start growing up and looking noticeably different over the 6 years they do the show, and the show is only suppose to take place over a couple months.
9. Are there aliens in the metal container with the hatch? This also REALLY creeped me out. More on this to come.
10. Is Walt one of the aliens? Walt creeps me out too.
11. Why is Walt weird/different? Is Turniphead like him too? There is something weird about Walt. I hope Turniphead isn't weird like him.
12. Why did Locke hit Sayid and keep him from using the satellite thing to triangulate their position? Are you kidding me?! It was Locke?! Locke is weird. He creeps me out.
13. Why doesn't Locke want off the island? Again, Locke is weird.
14. Is Locke crazy? Again, Locke creeps me out.

So, today at work all of a sudden I was struck with the thought that it could be aliens in the hatch making it glow. And that really freaked me out. I don't know why, but aliens scare me. I just kept thinking about it, so I texted Brooke and John and asked them if it was aliens. I said that it was really distracting me and that I was going to mess people's orders up so they should tell me because it benefited the greater good. (notice the Harry Potter reference, I was quite proud of it). John told me I was close and Brooke just laughed and said nice try. So to get Brooke to understand how serious this was I told her what I was picturing. Here it is, word for word.

Brooke, I'm picturing ET with rabies jumping out of the hatch and massacring the whole island and then tanning on the beach eating Reese's Pieces, please tell me if there are aliens?!?!?! And then, when ET gets sun burned he jumps on his bike with all the Jesus drug statues in the little basket and flys to the moon. Also ET will be wearing Sawyer's glasses and reading Watership Down while tanning in one of Shannon's bikinis.

And Brooke ignored it! She is very good at avoiding my questions, but how can she ignore that level of detailed terror?!?

An observation, Lost question updates, and Persuasion

First, lets do the Lost question updates.

1. I no longer care too much about whether Claire's baby is a boy or a girl (well I do, but this question eclipses it), what I really want to know is: what does Ethan wants with Claire and her baby? Ethan is freaking creepy. And weird looking.
2. WHAT DO THE NUMBERS MEAN?!?!?!?!? Brooke said that the numbers are confusing even at the end. That just will not do. I have issues with unanswered questions.
3. Do Charlie and Claire fall in love? I don't know why I'm obsessed with coupling everyone, I guess it's just because you can't be trapped on a weird, creepy deserted island and not have a few people fall in love.
4. And that's all the questions I can think of for now. I'm sure I've asked a bazillion more, but I just can't remember them all right now. I haven't been awake long enough for that.

Second, I'm watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on the ABC Family Harry Potter Weekend Marathon and I realized that my hair looks just like Hermione's if I do nothing to it.

Like, if I just woke up and started walking around doing stuff, my hair would look exactly like Hermione's from the first 2 Harry Potter movies. Except her bangs look better. Cause mine look like crap if I don't do anything to them. (You can read about my struggle with my bangs here.)

Third, Kelsie and I saw the play Persuasion on Thursday night.

(The girl sitting down wearing the gold dress is Mary. She was hilarious. The girl sitting in front of her played Louisa Musgrove. She was really funny too.)

It was sooo good! I like the actors in the BYU play better than in the movie. The girl who plays Mary was amazing. I would go see the play again just for her. Also the guy who played young Frederick was very attractive, minus the weird clip in hair thing that was super obvious because you could see the white clip holding it in.

Probably one of my favorite parts was right after Mary met Captain Wentworth and she's talking to Anne about how nice his name is. "Weeeentworth. Went-worth. Wentworth. Captain Wentworth." And then, "wouldn't Wentworth be a wonderful name for a dog? Come here Wentworth! Oh, good boy Wentworth!" If I had a dog I would name him Wentworth. But, since I'm 100% positive I will never have a dog, I don't really need to worry about it. In fact, the only reason I would ever get a dog now is so that I could name him Wentworth.

This is the text conversation Kelsie and I had when we were discussing when I would pick her up.

Kelsie: "Why don't you pick me up at 5:45 and then we can go to McDonald's for dinner."

Katie: "Why McDonald's? We can go someplace nicer if you want."

Kelsie: "Shamrock shakes!!!"

Katie: "I may have already had a Shamrock shake today..."

Kelsie: "Well you can have another one!"

We ended up going to Olive Garden for dinner. But then I did take Kelsie to get her Shamrock shake before I took her home. It was the least I could do for her on St. Patrick's day. Everyone reserves a Shamrock shake on St. Patrick's day. On a side note, I'm glad to say that my influence has been increasing Kelsie's dependency on McDonald's. That could be one of my greatest accomplishments.

I'm a problem reader

I read a quote today that I loved. It was by Emilie Buchwald and it said,

"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents."

I have loved books ever since I can remember. I am almost always reading a book and have read almost every day since the second grade.

My parents call me a problem reader. Which to be fair, my whole family is full of problem readers. It must be a genetic condition. All growing I continually got in trouble for reading too much. It was common to hear "Put the book down!" in my house. I also got my book taken away several times because I wouldn't stop reading it.

While we were growing up my parents read to my siblings and I all the time. My mom read series of books to the whole family, and every day we would listen to a chapter or two. She read us The Work and The Glory, Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites, Harry Potter (I was notorious for getting these books taken away. My dad would come in at 11 at night and take it away from me), Little House on the Prairie (I wanted to BE Laura Ingalls Wilder. I also totally checked this series out from the BYU library and read it), and countless others. My mom started reading the Little House series to me when I started kindergarten, and then I listened to it again when Kelsie started kindergarten and then again when Karlie started kindergarten. That's probably why I love the Little House books so much.

I saw my parents reading often when I was growing up too. Parents are the ones who introduce us to books and show us the fun in escaping to new and exciting worlds. Emilie Buchwald really had it right when she said children get a love of reading from their parents.

Happy Christmas Harry! Happy Christmas Ron!

I gave Brendan and Karlie Snuggies for Christmas.

It's the blanket with sleeves!

You can talk on the phone!

You can hold a baby!

You can play water polo!

And of course you can have a wizard's duel!!!

"You're a wizard Brendan!"

"I'm a what?"

"You're a witch Karlie!"

"I knew it! Wanna see a spell? 'Sunshine daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid fat rat yellow!'"

Oh boy! It's started!

Brendan must have been trained by Gildroy Lockheart! Look at that Disarming Charm! Expelliarmus!

Oh no! It looks like Karlie got the best of him in the end...

But its ok because I have this picture of him!