The last few days, R has either been working late or out late/visiting friends overnight, and the Hubs has been out as well, and I've had a little taste of those days when he would be teaching and both girls were living away at school, and, ahhhh. Quiet. Peace. Nice. (Not that I don't enjoy them, their company, yada, yada, I'm just saying.)Apparently I made the most of my time last night by settling in on the couch with the old laptop that does nothing but get wireless Internet -- nothing else really installed -- and reading Harry Potter fanfic for like, hours. Yes, I know my last entry was all Shakespeare all the time. I also read HP fanfic. There, I have no secrets from you now.
I got so involved in it that I forgot to write a diary entry, forgot to call my sister, forgot to call my OldFriend, which I was supposed to do as well. Silly old me.
And there's a new Degrassi on tonight, or at least, a new Degrassi Unscripted. Must. Tape. For. Grown. Daughters. So I'm updating now, for what it's worth. Nothing of importance to say, other than the nonsense above.
Oh, how's this. The end-of-the-year issue of the school newspaper came out this afternoon, and I unfolded it and looked at the pictures of the construction on the front page for a moment, and then said aloud to the SCM: "These pictures ... didn't I take them?" He said he thought so. So I checked back into the construction gallery on the website and these were, indeed, pictures taken by me that I had posted on the website and which had been lifted by the staff of the school paper and published. I do have a copyright statement on the home page, and it specifically states that all photographs are copyright: me unless stateed otherwise, and that they can't be used without my permission.
I spoke to the newspaper advisor, a fairly new teacher of whom I am quite fond. I wasn't angry -- I would certainly have given permission, if asked -- but this is a big journalism no-no, so I felt I ought to point it out to her. She freaked, and apologized profusely. She had assigned kids to get pictures. They had neglected to mention to her that they hadn't taken them themselves. She is mad at them, and extremely embarrassed, which I told her is unneccessary; I only felt that she would want to be sure in the future that they didn't lift pictures from someone who might sue them, which is why I told her at all. An interesting lesson in journalism for someone today, I think.
I have been listening to Travels With Charley for the past couple of weeks when I'm in the car, and I just can't get over how much I'm loving it. So much, in fact, that I hunted up Gary Sinise reading Of Mice and Men -- that's a library standard, so I just checked it out to me for the summer -- and I'll listen to that next. Once I got used to Sinise's voice and style, I just fell so deeply into Steinbeck's wonderful prose; I'll be sorry when I'm done with them both. But most of his other work is just too long for audio, and I'm not interested in abridgements, especially of this kind of thing. I know that I expound on Shakespeare from time to time, but I may not have mentioned that my choice for Great American Novel is The Grapes of Wrath. Maybe I'll try reading that again this summer. Steinbeck .... yes. Good.
(Someday when I'm really old and probably imprisoned or tied down or something so there's no escape, I will finally get myself to read Steinbeck's retelling of the King Arthur legends. Oh, yes, I'm sure I will. That's right.)
Almost time for Degrassi. And then I need to hunt down another HP story. Man, I need me that Half Blood Prince, and I need it now!
