Earth Hour 2014
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.– Gerard Manley Hopkins –
Things that are slightly interesting that I forgot to say
So after Wednesday’s long, rambling, text part of the post, there were still several things that I’d forgotten to say. In fact, these things were probably more important than my complaints about ineffective call centres, but they are still not very important. This is, therefore, just a general blog-housekeeping post. Let us hope that it is more effective than my real housekeeping. If you don’t believe me, have a look at the mess of homework that’s on my bed right now. (more…)
Well, I’m back. (And on Pottermore).
My titles just keep getting weirder and weirder. I seem to like putting punctuation in them lately. Also, I’m going through another “quoting Lord of the Rings“-phase.
Anyway… hello! How is everyone? I’m (mostly) back from my exam-imposed exile. I wrote three papers last week. Three! I only have three modules! And the exam period is three weeks long, but what happens?
^^ Pinterest supplies me with wonderful things like this, to help me rant my way through three papers. Now I only have one paper left, two weeks later than the others. I usually hate my exam timetable, but this time it is worse than usual.
Well, that is all over and I survived. And now… on to what happens now.
Once these exams are finally over, I’m going to go away on a little holiday. A bit of road trip and a visit to family. I will be taking mobile internet with me, but I don’t think I’d be able to blog. So, I got an idea! I decided to queue up a lot of posts. (Not a very original idea, I admit.) But what would I write about?
I starting searching for a topic or blog challenge that would last me a long time. Finally I settled on the 30 Day Book Challenge, which means I can talk a lot about books. I love talking about books, but most people don’t want to listen. They tend to walk away in confusion, but the blog can’t walk away on me, or try to remind me that the things I read are not real. (I hate it when people try to do that. I know it’s not real, but that’s not going to stop me talking about it as if it was real. 😛 ) Well, I suppose the readers could walk away in disgust. But you are not going to do that are you. *glare* 😛
I have nearly finished writing all the posts and then I will start queuing then up. Actually, I think that it will be more than 30 posts. Why? Well, if you ask me to talk about my favourite character, do you really expect me to talk about only one person? Some of the entries grew into small essays, so I split them up seeing that I did not want to actually cut them shorter. So then I will post them across several days, because no-one wants to read that much all at once.
I will start posting the entries further apart before I leave, so that there is still space for me to pop in with other posts, but once I leave, I will set them to post everyday. Won’t that be fun? The only time that this blog has ever been active with posts!
Now for the most important order of business… (to me, anyway 😉 )
Pottermore!
I’ve wanted to get into Pottermore ever since I heard about it. I signed up for beta, but I never got an email. Then, when it opened to the public in April… I was in the middle of working through my stack of assignments and I was so disappointed. I was seriously tempted to just create an account anyway. Once, I got as far as the log-in screen and I was filling in my details when my sensible side decided to close the browser window to avoid further temptation. So I waited… until really late on Sunday night, I think. Then I signed up. I went much too fast through the first few chapters because I wanted to get to Diagon Alley and the Sorting Hat so badly… A wand and a House… those were the main attractions of Pottermore to me. Especially the House. I always wanted to get Sorted when I read Harry Potter all those years ago. Even though it’s just an online quiz it still felt… more official to get Pottermore to tell you your place at Hogwarts, instead of you deciding for yourself.
So… first I did the wand quiz and got a wand:
I thought it was kind of cute how the quiz asked: “Are you short, average, or tall for your age?” Obviously I’m a bit old for any “for your age”, but I’m still short. 😛
And then… I got to go on to the Sorting Hat quiz. I knew what House I wanted to end up in, but I wasn’t at all sure if I would get it. I know many people complain about not getting what they wanted on Pottermore and how the quiz is rigged, so I was ridiculously nervous. When I started the questions though, I could not see how people think it is rigged, or that you can really cheat on it. Sometimes there are six options to choose from and sometimes only two. And it is hardly ever obvious where any of the questions lead to, so I don’t think you could lie and answer in such a way that you would be guaranteed to end up in your preference. I must say, some of them I could answer immediately and some of them left me stumped. 😉 There is no indication of how many questions are left (actually, I wondered if some people get more questions than others) and I was still happily beavering away, when a screen popped up.
And…
………
…
YES! 😀 Exactly what I’ve always wanted, ever since I was a tween! 😀
Even when I was a little kid and my mother read me Philosopher’s Stone as a bedtime story, I wished that I would be in Ravenclaw. My preference never changed, even though I haven’t read a Harry Potter-book in years. I went on a happiness-high for the rest of the night. And the next day. I’m still kind of excited right now. 🙂
If there is anyone here who is also on Pottermore and would like to add me as a friend, my username is:
An unexpected bonus if you add me is you’ll be able to see in what country I live. It has always been something that I am sensitive about revealing online, because you wouldn’t be-lieve the stupid comments people leave you if you are not from one of the “mainstream” countries like the USA, the UK or Canada. I want to be judged on who I am, not where I live. So I completely stopped revealing my location. However, on Pottermore you can’t hide it. 😉
Right, now I’ll stop gushing about how wonderful Pottermore is. But can I just say that I love exploring the entire site? Right, right…
And I apologise to anyone who is not a fan of Harry Potter and found that entire last piece incomprehensible. I’ll try to limit my talking about it! 😉
In other, non-related news (nothing in this entire blog post is related to anything else), here are the results of the poll I put in my last post. Thank you to everyone who voted! I was surprised to see the wide age range of people who have patience with my ramblings! So…
I think that is now everything! I’ll get round to starting the book challenge posts sometime soon!
Ravenclaw-ish love,
PS. On the 3rd of June I finally achieved a 500-day writing streak on 750words.com. Phew! That was a lot of hard work, but I’m still continuing on! 🙂
