::waves::

Good morning, happy Monday, long time, no chat—work got ridiculous here, to the point where I was replying to emails while I was at Disney World by saying that I would be happy to help with their suddenly-on-fire project, but that a) at Disney World; and b) *already* working with somebody else's suddenly-on-fire project and had another one in the queue. Between what I worked at Disney and what I worked over this last weekend, I practically have another forty hours on the books.

At least I get paid on contract hours these days, because I would have flipped out if I'd been on salary.

My brain is kind of mush, though, enough that I lost all momentum on my reading this year. I have a half-dozen books started, but they're all (even the fluffy romances) making my brain hurt to read them. Fortunately, I saw a comment on one of my gazillion bookish blogs to the audiobook version of As You Wish, Cary Elwes' memoir of making The Princess Bride, which I read a few years ago and adored. I'm happy to say the audio version is almost as nice, and includes about half of the people quoted in the book to narrate their parts. It's very soothing during our especially horrible traffic these days. (Did I talk about the interstate that collapsed a few weeks ago? Yeah, that's not far from the house/the high school, and while I don't work in-town these days, the only way for the quarter of a million cars that use that route to get into the city now is to use the interstate I *do* take to the office around to I75. Traffic is entirely f*cked until they rebuild the burnt out part, sigh.)

Oh! I forgot to mention that #2Son got picked to do the wand ceremony at Ollivander's in Diagon Alley when we were there over spring break. It was pretty excellent! Not only is the 'wand picking the wizard' scene very well-staged (and the guys playing Mr. Ollivander are totally into it), but #2 went along with being the center of attention really well. Given his sometimes-overwhelming anxiety, this is not always the case, and while he said later that he could have done without the 'audience participation', at the time, he was super laidback and even cracked a few jokes when the first few wands didn't work out so well. I, of course, bought the wand that 'picked' him—I had already been contemplating getting one of the interactive wands, and it seemed like the thing to do when the wand is picked for you. So, now we have a scary-looking wand that Mr. Ollivander assures us is good for prophecying and scrying. I really didn't get to spend enough time in Diagon Alley, though the weather was overcast and drizzly, which added enormously to the atmosphere. I also didn't get to do dinner at Toothsome's Chocolate Emporium, the steampunk restaurant at Citywalk, so I foresee more time spent at Universal in my future.

I should probably also mention that I skimmed through my lj friendslist, back to before the new TOS announcement, and added as many people who made mention of having a DW as I could find, but I probably missed leaving a comment saying as much on a fair number of journals, so, um, if you're one of those people, hi? I also actually looked at my Manage Circle page on DW and tried to clean that up a bit, because it appears that I missed ppl subscribing here, oops? Sorry, again. I'm probably going to shift base here at some point, but did I mention the craziness at work? Plus, it's tax season so that's taking up stupid amounts of time, too. Sorting out online presence is on my list, though, so at some point I will address it.

I will leave you with a fun fic rec to distract your brain from the general blah-ness of another Monday in 45's administration:
The Principle of Terrestrial Mediocrity, by AlphaFlyer, Ant Man | MCU, gen, ~5000 words===Luis likes his job at Stark Tower and would like to tell you about a special Friday night. :D