Yesterday was such a good day! Jeannette and Chris came over from New Orleans and we had Harry Potter day; we made lunch, watched the first two HP movies on DVD (with a watermelon break in between), made dinner, then went to see the new HP movie at 8 p.m. Not only did we have a really fun time hanging out, playing with the kittens, and spazzing a little bit before the new movie about how excited we were, but ALSO I got to appreciate the third movie even more after just having seen the first two. The third book is a bit more serious anyway, but the movie has a new director, and he made all the difference in the world. There were a lot of cheesy points in the first two movies that irritated me, mostly when they felt like they were only appealing to little kids, but this third one had none of those. The three main characters looked and acted more like regular kids than like kids in a movie all about the wonders of the wizard world... they were the second thing too, of course, but it didn't feel like we were being beaten over the head with it. The novelty of the wizard motif seems to have worn off enough that they can now concentrate on the plot, which is the really great part of it anyway. It's funny to see how much all the teen actors aged and grew from the second to the third movies, because only a summer has passed in movie time, but several years have gone by in real time! Anyway, we really enjoyed the movie, and unlike the first two, which I liked mostly because they were all I had, this one is actually well-made and impressive on its own. One moment I particularly enjoyed was during some time traveling that Harry and Hermione do; they're hiding in the woods watching themselves do something, and she says, "Is that really what my hair looks like from the back?" I don't remember that being in the book, but it was a nice addition, because it's SUCH a teenaged-girl thing to say. It cracked me up.

After the movie, we gave Jeannette and Chris directions back out to the interstate and walked over to Barnes & Noble. One of Jack's friends who used to work at Waldenbooks is at B&N part-time now, so he wanted to see if she was around. I got a coffee drink and he visited with her a little (she was excited for him about his new job), and since they were about to close, we moved on down the street to Starbucks to see if his former assistant manager was there. She used to be an assistant manager at Starbucks too, and we thought she still was; she had actually quit but was still hanging out there, so it was lucky that we ran into her! She and her partner had just gotten there and were having a cup of coffee outside, so we toted our frappuccino that we had bought at the other Starbucks (inside B&N) and sat outside with them. They wouldn't ever be our best friends or anything, but they're cute together, fun to hang out with, and have lots of funny pet stories.

In other news, I woke up this morning after a series of weird dreams and suddenly felt awful. I was convinced for about twenty minutes that I had contracted some bizarre African disease and was about to die. I was cold and sweaty in a really disturbing way, but my temperature according to the thermometer was 97.5, and I felt woozy and stomach-achey. Luckily, it passed after just a little while, but it was the most severe strange feeling I can remember ever having besides the first time I had a migraine. Anyway, I'm fine now except for having a bit of a headache, but it was so weird. I wanted to share.

Celia continues to be cute and rambunctious, and she's still trying to bring Patti forcibly out of her shell. There's still hissing and swatting, but less of it. One thing that pleased me was seeing Patti try to sniff Celia's butt a few times, because that means she's at least interested in getting to know her. Contrast that with two weeks ago, when the main feeling from Patti seemed to be, "Get away from me, you weird little fuzz ball." So we're making progress. =) Chris and Jeannette had fun playing with Celia yesterday, and at one point, Chris even curled up on the floor and tried to show Celia how to play most effectively with her little fish on a string; he was batting it around and being crazy, so that was fun to watch! Celia mostly napped through the movies, and Patti came through for pets a few times to let us know she was around. We've put Patti on a new super-duper diet food from the vet, hoping that at long last, we can get her to shed some weight so she'll be healthier. We're supposed to give her 3/4 cup a day, whereas she was only eating 1/2 cup of the other food, and she had been on the other measurement for so long that we're having trouble getting her to eat enough of this. The vet told me that she has to eat a lot, because it's a really low-calorie food; apparently she'll have all sorts of liver trouble if she doesn't get enough nutrition, because cats' bodies don't know how to process fat without processing ALL of it at once. We're working on that, and we're supposed to bring her back to the vet in a couple of weeks to have her weighed officially and see whether it's working. Celia isn't supposed to eat much of this food, because kittens need a lot more nutrition, so we're trying to keep her away from it (with moderate success). Anyway, cross your fingers for Patti. She's been overweight for at least a year and a half, and we've tried many different light and weight-management foods before this, so I hope this will be the one that works to get her slimmed down a little.

I usually end my posts very abruptly because I can't think of good concluding sentences, and this one will be no different.

Labels: felines, friends, what to watch

• posted by erica 6/05/2004 12:06:00 PM
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