Harry Potter 7!

MSN Movies is calling it Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. I got an email last night from Borders calling it Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. No release date yet; she's still writing it. Whatever it's called, she'd better hurry up -- I'm anxiously waiting!

I'm also anxiously waiting for the next Harry Potter movie -- those kids are growing up quickly!

I loved Harry Potter. The saddest part of it was once I had finished it Sunday morning, and Eric was reading it, and I didn't have any more Harry Potter to read myself. Harry Potter withdrawal isn't any fun.

And neither is nasal spray withdrawal. Luckily, I think I realized just in time that I had been using that stuff too long, so hopefully I didn't sustain any long-lasting damage. Although this cold is STILL HERE.

I saw my first two deliveries last night (well, the first two of this year; I saw two during first year also). They were pretty cool. The first one was pushing under a failed epidural, and it can't be any fun to have to go natural when you weren't planning to -- especially not for the stitches afterward. The second one wasn't pushing at all, which made the baby's heart rate drop between contractions, so that was a tense delivery. There are likely many reasons she wasn't pushing, but I don't really think the epidural was one of them. I think the thing I was most struck with was how floppily a baby gets held once it's delivered. You spend the next six months worrying about head support, but in those first 30 seconds, it's just a vice grip around the neck and nothing else. Of course, it being private practice, I didn't get to do anything, but NEXT Monday will be here soon enough.

And while I'm on the subject of private practice, I just have to gripe about my doctor for a minute.
-She smokes. In her office with the door shut. She turns on a little desk air purifier and sucks them down like they're her last breath. Which, ironically, they are. She apologizes for exposing me to it, which I appreciate, but it's still disgusting.
-She's really, really smart and loves to educate her patients, but she takes forever to do it, which makes her run chronically behind schedule. In the first two hours yesterday, we saw 5 patients, when probably more like 10 had been scheduled. We saw the 2:45 appointment at 4:45. Why her patients put up with it, I don't know. But they really, really, really love her.
-She loves to talk about herself, which if I remember correctly, you aren't really supposed to do. But she illustrates every story and answer to a question with what happened to HER when she was pregnant, or how old SHE was at menarche, or what SHE'S doing for perimenopausal symptoms. I don't know if it's the fact that she does it at all or the fact that I've now heard it all multiple times a day for over a week that is driving me crazy.
-She's from Western KY, so she has an accent -- no big deal, everyone around here does. But she has some country turn of phrases that drive me crazy as well. Like, "Fair to middlin'" in response to "How are you?". She also says "mute point" and talks about putting her "John Henry" on documents. Seriously, she graduated magna cum laude from medical school but has been saying "John Henry" instead of "John Hancock" for almost 50 years!

There, I feel better now that I've gotten it out. Overall, I can't complain. She's a great teacher, even if I don't get to do much (but really, if I were going to my Ob/Gyn who I'd been seeing for 15 years, I wouldn't want a med student doing an internal exam on me, either). I am now very good at measuring fundal heights, though, which is trickier than it seems. She's also very frank and talks about the problems of the business of medicine, and of Ob/Gyn in particular, very willingly, which I find very interesting. But that's a discussion for another day.

Oh, and the best part about private practice? Office hours, 10-5. With a 7:30 am surgery thrown in a couple times a week, and some evening deliveries a couple times a week as well, but over all, it is not bad. For me, at least; she still rounds at the hospital every morning and takes overnight Ob call, but I don't have to do any of that, because as she says, my time will come soon enough.

Harry Potter

The movie was OK, not great. It was too rushed; it was a movie full of "telling, not showing" (thank you, Mrs. Thompson; that did sink in in freshman English), which is stupid, since the point of a movie is to show. The 3-D at the end was kind of cool, but definitely not integral or necessary, and the glasses gave me a headache. The movie was only 2 hours and 15 minutes long; an extra 15 or 20 minutes would have helped a whole lot and wouldn't have made the movie unbearably long.

*Spoiler alert. Don't read below if you don't want to know what happens.*

-They should have visited Mr. Weasley in St. Mungos for three reasons: 1) To visit him. Duh. Instead he gets attacked, and the next minute, he's home for Christmas. 2) To see Neville visiting his parents, Frank and Alice Longbottom to learn that Bellatrix Lestrange had Cruciatus-ed them into insanity (especially since they foreshadowed it in movie/book #4). Instead, Neville TELLS Harry about what happened to his parents, which is not what Neville would do at all. 3) To introduce a new, fun, magical place to the viewer. We haven't seen St. Mungo's before, and it's supposed to be pretty cool. Wow us with another aspect of the wizarding world when you have the chance!

-Yes, most people who are seeing the movie have read the book, but that's a bad assumption to make. Now you have dialogue such as, "For a moment when I was looking at Dumbledore, I wanted to..." You wanted to WHAT, Harry? Attack him because you were still feeling like the snake? We the viewer only know that because we read the book; I don't think a naive movie-goer would have gotten that message.

-Everything involving the Order was hurried. They could have taken two seconds to ensure that the viewer understood that Snape DID understand Harry's cryptic message and alerted the Order, but again, they're hoping that people who read the book know it and those who didn't don't notice it. In the beginning, they don't explain in any way that Harry is upset that he hasn't heard any news from Ron and Hermione; instead, when he arrives at headquarters, he SAYS that he's pissed that he hadn't gotten any letters. I'm supposed to believe that? You have a whole summer of frustration pent up? I didn't see any evidence of it before now.

-I would have liked a little more Little Whinging (they pronounced it and now I know that it's "win-jing" not "wing-ing") action. They should have had the part where Aunt Petunia receives her howler ("Remember my last, Petunia"). Not just because I'm being an annoying "they left out all the details from the book" kind of viewer, but because it ends up tying into continuity bits later on. Again, the movie was very rushed in the beginning, through the dementor attack, the Order arriving, and the hearing. I got the sense that the director for some reason had this urgent need to get us to Hogwarts, because a Harry Potter movie doesn't really start until you get to Hogwarts. Which isn't true.

-Big plot hole: They left out the scene where Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville are introduced to the thestrals, which if you remember, can only be seen by Harry and Luna. Instead, they show all six kids flying to London, with no sense of the fear and nervousness the other four must be feeling about flying on something they can't see.

-No quidditch. Boo. They left it out completely.

-In every other movie, you get a sense that Hogwarts is awe-inspiring and amazing. I don't know if it was the camera work or the music, but I definitely did not get that in this movie. It was just blah Hogwarts, our boring school.

-They could have expanded on the Hogsmeade trip a little. You know, show all the kids lining up to go to Hogsmeade, the general excitement of a Hogsmeade day. Instead, they just walk into the pub like it's totally normal for people to leave the school grounds.

-I'm OK with the fact that they implicated Cho as the snitch about the D.A., but only because they exonerated her by saying it was due to veritaserum.

So, in conclusion, blah. I'm not excited about the fact that this director is doing the next movie, too. I've never LOVED the movies compared to the books, but I always thought they were good, you know? This one really just wasn't that great. Or maybe it was my wine-with-dinner and 3-D glasses headache that made me grouchy? I'll give it another chance in a few months after it comes out on DVD. Until then, I just have to let the excitement mount for the book! We pre-ordered a copy from Borders; whether we'll be attending the midnight release party remains to be seen.

Redbox

So, I pretty much never rent videos. We used to do Netflix, but by the end we were just wasting our money because these movies would show up and just sit on our TV for weeks while we did everything but watch them. The only movie I've wanted to see on DVD recently was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, so I requested it from the library. After waiting two weeks and still being at the bottom of a 16-person waiting list (person #1 apparently was choosing not to return it), I gave up and went to Wild and Woolly Video and then Blockbuster last Wednesday. At Blockbuster they convinced me to sign up for the Blockbuster netflix two-week free trial, because in doing so I would get my Harry Potter rental for free, so I did it. The movies came, and now I have Stranger Than Fiction, The Holiday, and The Queen sitting on our TV. There's a chance I might watch them this weekend, since Eric's going to be at The Shore, but I doubt it. So why I even care about movie rentals, I really don't know. But I went to McDonald's today on my way home to get an iced coffee, but apparently only east coast McDonald'ses have iced coffee; Louisville McDonald'ses have sweet tea. So I got an ice cream cone instead. But I also saw that they also have Redbox, the pluses of which have been known to Maryland residents for some time and have also been lauded. But it's new here. You can rent a DVD for $1 per night. Did I mention that McDonald's is RIGHT NEXT DOOR to my apartment?

So, if I ever do need to rent a movie again, I can just go to McDonald's. I can't foresee that happening any time soon, but still, it's cool.

More Harry Potter!

The trailer for Half-Blood Prince is out -- go watch it NOW (right here), and yesterday I got an email that The Tales of Beedle the Bard will be published and released this winter. You can read the announcement here.

Aahhh, I LOVE Harry Potter. As I'm sure you know. And if you need evidence, here you go.

Movies I'd like to see...

...when I get my life back (wait -- when IS that, exactly?)

Spider-Man 3 (even though I've heard it's not that good)
Waitress
The Ex
Georgia Rule (even though it has Lindsay Lohan?)
Shrek the Third (I love the M&M commercial where Donkey and Puss in Boots are smacking on peanut butter)
Pirates of the Caribbean!
Knocked Up
Ratatouille (and while I'm at it, Meet the Robinsons) (I don't care if they've split; Disney and Pixar still go together in my mind)
Transformers (maybe)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix!!!!!!!!!!! (Trailer here)
The Simpsons Movie (maybe)
The Bourne Ultimatum
Becoming Jane (Don't know, just heard of it, but I do like Jane Austen, and Anne Hathaway and so cute)
Good Luck Chuck (despite annoying Jessica Alba)

And that brings us to the end of August with release dates, and the end of my ridiculous daydreaming. Considering the last movie I saw was Pan's Labyrinth, which comes out on DVD next week, it's probably not realistic to think I'm going to get to see 1/10 of those movies. However, I will see Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter NO MATTER WHAT. I may have to wait for Pirates (May 25 falls before June 1, unfortunately), but I don't care WHAT babies I'm supposed to be delivering on July 13; I'll be at the theater.

I bought tickets yesterday for Harry Potter. Saturday, July 14, 9:45 pm, row K, seats 6 and 7. $21 total with a student discount. It's the IMAX version (I asked; it is the IMAX film which is 70 mm instead of 35 mm, and the screen is IMAX height, but not full IMAX width or curvature like the science centers, although it is still a bigger screen than they use for regular movies), and the last 20 minutes of the film are apparently going to be in 3-D. Whoa. We are totally Harry Pottered out at this apartment, with Eric reading all the books for the first time, me being upset that I already re-read them all and don't have the reading-them-for-the-first-time-bliss he does, re-watching the movies, and in general getting really excited for movie #5 and book #7.

This weekend I'm going to be manning a single-payer health care booth at Baxter Avenue Theaters for Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare in conjunction with the release of Sicko. Yay, socialist propaganda! (Louisville shoutout: Footage of Congressional testimony by Dr. Linda Peeno, whose former job was to reject medical claims for Humana, and who was portrayed by Laura Dern in the movie Damaged Care, reportedly appears in Sicko.) Sometimes it's fun to be in the minority, able to associate with only a few friends over certain topics and spread my liberal agenda, but mostly I just wish I was back home, where I could make statements like "I'm going to see Sicko this weekend" and not have someone respond, "Why would you ever see a Michael Moore movie?" or not worry about what someone else might think. It gets tiring, you know, to always be aware of who's near and what you should think twice about saying.

This past weekend we went to a Bats game and we watched the Pawtucket Sox pitcher throw a perfect game for 8 innings. It was busted, and then it started to pour, so we left. I'm told I saw something momentous that I might remember for the rest of my life and relate to future generations ("Why yes, I once saw a perfect game. It was 2007, Sox vs Bats, and it was broken in the 8th inning."), but I'm sure I won't, so I document it here for posterity. Whatever posterity this blog might pose.

This week is technically my first on Ob/Gyn, but we just have to attend lectures. Today I learned all about normal and abnormal labors and deliveries, with terms and phrases like "occiput anterior," "platypelloid pelvis" "engaging the pelvis," and "shoulder dystocia" being introduced to my vocabulary. Did you know that on average, the baby of a smoking mother is 9 oz smaller than one of a non-smoking mother? Or that the average length of the diagonal conjugate* is 12 cm? Or that the LD50** of blood loss is 1.5L? That's pretty astonishing when you think about the fact that when you donate blood, you give a whole 1L. Half of us are only 500 ml away from death when we donate to the Red Cross.

I requested the opportunity to observe at least one elective abortion during the next 8 weeks, a risky request by all assessments. But I thought I should do it, since this is my one chance to do so. There are only two physicians in Louisville who perform them (actually, they're the only two in the state, I'm pretty sure), and it all hinges on whether they are registered as gratis faculty with the university, so that my observations would count. So we'll see what happens. Again, I could do without the fear and nervousness associated with making requests like that.

My Ob/Gyn experience starts for real on Monday, when I'll be on GynOnc surgery for 2 weeks (that's gynecology oncology). Normally, we have to be DONE rounding on our patients by 7:15 am, which means, that's right, starting my day at about 5 am. Then it's surgery all day, which I've not heard good things about***. Other than that, I will reserve judgment until it starts. Open mind and all that...


*Don't worry, no one cares. But if you do, it's the length from the bottom of the pubic symphysis to the sacral promontory. That is, you hold your right hand like you're making a fake gun, with two fingers for the barrel instead of one, and put those fingers into the woman's vagina and feel for the sacral promontory, the bony protuberance that's sort of the bottom of the bottom spine bone before it curves into the tail bone. Here, this shows you. Only that's on a model pelvis, and it's very easy to forget that you are sticking your fingers into the inside of a woman and feeling around for bones sticking out at you while she's in labor. No, thank you.
**LD50 (the "50" should be subscripted) is the "lethal dose 50" or the dose that is lethal in 50% of patients. You usually hear it in terms of the LD50 of a drug, but here we're talking about the amount of blood loss that is lethal in 50% of patients. 1.5L, seriously. No wonder I have so many problems donating blood.
***As a medical student, that is. I'm sure it's fun to do surgery when you're actually DOING surgery. But I haven't heard rave reviews for retracting.

Summer 2007 Movies -- Report

This was the list of movies I wanted to see this summer:

• Spider-Man 3 (even though I've heard it's not that good): Never saw it. Heard it wasn't that great, but wouldn't mind seeing it.
• Waitress: Never saw it. Would still like to see it.
• The Ex: What movie was this? I had to go look it up just now. I think I decided against it because I didn't have time and I thought it might be more depressing than I needed. Maybe I'll rent it sometime.
  
• Georgia Rule (even though it has Lindsay Lohan?): Never saw it. What was I thinking? LiLo makes me sick.
• Shrek the Third (I love the M&M commercial where Donkey and Puss in Boots are smacking on peanut butter): Never saw it. Will probably rent it someday.
• Pirates of the Caribbean!: Saw it! It was pretty good. I both liked and disliked the epilogue scene where Will came back as he promised. I do rest easier knowing that there are some good guys out there in fiction world who keep their promises.
• Knocked Up: Saw it. HILARIOUS. Easiest the funniest movie I've seen in... maybe ever.
• Ratatouille (and while I'm at it, Meet the Robinsons) (I don't care if they've split; Disney and Pixar still go together in my mind): Never saw it. I saw today that it's playing at the second-run theater near the ENT's office where I'm shadowing this week. Will probably see it someday (I AM a Disney girl at heart, after all).
• Transformers (maybe): Never saw it. Heard it wasn't that great.
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix!!!!!!!!!!! (Trailer here): Saw it. In 3-D. And already blogged about it.
• The Simpsons Movie (maybe): Never saw it. Heard it was worth seeing.
• The Bourne Ultimatum: Saw it. Really liked it. Great action movie. Definitely better than the second one, and possibly better than the first (since the first one had all that time wasted with explaining the setup).
• Becoming Jane (Don't know, just heard of it, but I do like Jane Austen, and Anne Hathaway and so cute): Never saw it. Would like a nice chick flick right about now, though.
• Good Luck Chuck (despite annoying Jessica Alba): So glad I didn't see it.

Movies not on that list that I did see:

• Sicko: I don't know why that wasn't on the above list, because I totally intended to see it as soon as it came out. And not only did I see it, but I saw it on opening day and helped with a news conference for PNHP-KY for it.
• Die Hard 4: An awesome action movie, a reminder of what action movies were like before they were so heavily digitalized (and yes, I know this one still relied in digital effects, but you know what I mean), which was nicely mirrored in the issues Bruce Willis had trying to catch a bad guy in 2007. And btw, Justin Long was totally adorable as the dorky computer nerd sidekick.
• Superbad: Much funnier than I thought it would be. Hadn't laughed that hard since Knocked Up. I really didn't think those guys could make another movie so funny right on the heels of Knocked Up, but I have to give them credit. The whole obsessed-with-drawing-penises thing was a little sophomoric, though.
• Balls of Fury: Horrible. From the trailers it looked like it had the potential to be good, but it was pretty horrible.

Movies I didn't consider that I now do want to see:

• Paris, Je T'aime: Because I do aime Paris. I sort of considered this one back at the beginning of the summer, but I don't think it had a long showing here. Plus I was totally swamped at the beginning of the summer, in case you don't remember.
• Ocean's 13: Heard this was really good. I never saw Ocean's 12, but I heard it was bad, so I wrote off 13, but it turns out lots of people really liked 13.

Movies I want to see in the rest of 2007 (not an exhaustive list because I still don't have that much time to pay attention to the entertainment world):

• Elizabeth 2: Queen Elizabeth is quite possibly my hero. She was an amazing ruler, coming into the monarchy under difficult circumstances, as a woman, and eventually creating the greatest empire in the world. Does that sound familiar -- as a potential goal of mine, say? I've taken extensive notes from this leadership biography about her. Plus, the first Elizabeth movie was really good.
• The Darjeeling Limited: What can I say, I don't know anything about this movie, but I like Wes Anderson films.
• Maybe Beowulf?
• Maybe August Rush? It has the potential to be cheesy and bad, but possibly also heartwarming and good. Plus Jonathan Rhys Meyers is cute. And has an accent.
  
• Sweeney Todd: DEFINITELY. Have I mentioned that it's pretty much my favorite musical of all time? It's a close race between that and My Fair Lady, for sure. We performed it in high school (and it was awesome, I must admit), and I saw it at the Arden Theatre in Philly in 2005. Now it is not only coming to the big screen (which makes me nervous, although Tim Burton, the king of creepily good movies is the one doing it, and it has Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, both of which are good things) but it is also coming to the Kentucky Center this season -- and over my birthday weekend, no less!

Pan's Labryinth

Go see it! And if you haven't seen Children of Men yet, go see that one, too! But to lessen the emotional distress, either see them on the same weekend so you do all your crying at once or give yourself plenty of buffer time in between them (more than two weeks) to recover and not feel like you're reliving your grief from the first one all over again. Or, if you're unlike me and don't cry at movies, then don't worry about this crazy pre-planning.

I didn't know anything about Pan's Labyrinth before heading into it; a friend called us up last night and asked if we wanted to go, and we didn't have anything better planned. I actually hadn't even heard of the movie at all (entertainment news is the last thing on my radar these days, unfortunately), and just in case you haven't either, here's all you need to know: It's set in WWII Spain and is filmed in Spanish, so you have to read subtitles (although I was really proud to recognize the word "dolor" multiple times throughout the movie -- yay for my crappy Medical Spanish class!). It's a weird mix of reality and fantasy -- they intermix with each other, not like a fantasy movie set on a backdrop of reality, like Narnia, or a movie where fantasy IS reality, like Harry Potter. This is unlike anything else I've ever seen in my life. The movie has gotten all sorts of awards already, and deservedly so.

I can't keep watching these emotionally burdensome movies, though -- it's an exhausting experience! Plus, we just got all three of the LOTR movies, so we've been watching those again and again at home. Too many epics in too short a time. I might have to put on something light and Disneylike tonight to make up for it.

For your reading pleasure

800 chihuahuas, other dogs taken from Arizona home - Ew. 800?!?!? I can see why E gets so upset about me wanting a third cat. Then it will be 4...5.... but they're so gosh-darned cute! Like seriously, what's so wrong about wanting a clown car of kitties? Or mitosis bunnies? I'd stop before it got out of control, srsly!

Boyfriend: Phobia caused woman's 2-year bathroom stay - Now I KNOW you've heard this story already. I cannot even imagine. One thing E and I are wondering is whether she's overweight? We're guessing yes, because in order for your skin to grow around a toilet seat, there would probably have to be some overhang to begin with, right? Plus, if she wasn't mobile for two years, she probably wasn't getting enough exercise to keep the pounds off.

School clears kid in contraband candy caper - Political scandals on a small scale! How traumatizing! First Spitzer, and now this... what is going to disappoint us next? Don't worry, I promise not to disappoint MY constituency. (Except I've been eating lunch in the Norton doctor's lounge this week even though I'm not working at Norton... shhh!)

Some day my 9-to-5 job will come - I saw the premiere of this show, and it was pretty good. Yes, it was totally sad that the husband couldn't handle the kids, and kind of sad that the oldest daughter was a second mommy (reminds me of my own childhood), but it was a good show. Obviously she doesn't need the job for the money, or she would have gone back to work already, but is it really that bad for women to want to do something outside the home? I think people need to find other things to be upset about, rather than how other people's children are raised. Like global warming, sustainable energy, or Darfur. I'm really more upset that 'Wifeswap' is on the air than this one.

Final 'Harry Potter' book to be split into two movies - Yay! Of course, if you ask me, all of the books had elements that shouldn't have been removed that were removed anyway, to the detriment of future movies. I'm interested to see how this will turn out.

Tooth Fairy economics ain't nickel-and-dime - I got a quarter for each tooth. And toward the end there, the Tooth Fairy left me my teeth, too, so I used to have an empty tic-tac container with a good number of my baby teeth in it... I wonder where that went to? But even back then, I knew kids who got a dollar, and I think the maximum I ever heard was five. Craziness! And apparently I didn't take enough business classes, because I'm intrigued to hear the rest of the dad at the end's franchise lecture...

Alaska!

That's right, we're back, as if the updated Free Stuff! post didn't give it away.

Here's two weeks in a nutshell:

• June 1: B-Day (that's Boards Day). It was definitely a stamina type of day. I was pretty good with timing, making sure to take each of my breaks in between each section, even if they weren't for the full amount of time. Kept a steady stream of caffeine and energy bars going, and I never really felt the post-prandial slump. I felt pretty good after I was done. Of course, most people apparently feel like they failed but turn out to have done fine, so by feeling fine, I probably failed. Oh well, nothing to do but wait until July 18 for my score. Picked up Eric at BWI, met Duc in Annapolis for dinner, and headed to Rock Hall, MD, where we picked crabs and drank beer.
  
• June 2: Aaron and Melanie's wedding. Pictures here and here (I got a lot of the reception; Duc got the night before at the crab shack). Highlights of the wedding: good bar, good fun, and someone else wearing the same dress I did. How embarrassing!
  
• June 3: Woke up at 5 am to hit the road and drive back to BWI. Got on a flight to Seattle, scored a 3-seater row all to ourselves on the first leg and the coveted two-person exit row on the second (love you, Southwest!). The only disappointment was forgetting my Southwest drink vouchers back in Louisville. Not that there was going to be any drinking on that flight, not after the previous night. But you know, a cocktail on our way home wouldn't have been bad. Made it to the ship. Pictures of the Alaska trip are here (although the captioning process hasn't been finished yet).
• Ziplining in Ketchikan was awesome. Did you know that Ketchikan is the third rainiest place on Earth after Kuaui and the Amazon? Luckily for us, it was a beautiful day!
• In Juneau (rainier day) we went to the Mendenhall Glacier, and then took an "unofficial trail" that led much closer to it and a waterfall. We scrambled over a rockslide and got right up to the waterfall -- it was awesome. There's nothing like breaking the rules and risking a broken neck for an adrenaline rush.
• In Skagway we took the White Pass and Yukon Railroad into Fraser, BC. The railroad ride was really gorgeous, and it was amazing to see the landscape change so dramatically between Alaska and Canada. The mountains got craggier and there was much less low-lying brush and trees. It made us wonder if the geography shift was how they decided where to put the border in the first place. Oh yeah, and the dandelions in Skagway were gi-normous (apparently the bears eat them after waking up from hibernation, because they serve as a natural laxative).
  
• Victoria was an absolutely gorgeous city -- flowers EVERYWHERE. And I saw multiple gardens growing calla lilies, which I've never seen growing in real life before. There were also these funny little blue flowers that grew in bunches on a bush -- does anyone know what they are? I've never seen them before.
  
• Wildlife count: whales (gray or humpback, not really sure), a bear, eagles, mountain goats, and assorted birds. We were too early for the salmon run, it was the wrong part of Alaska for moose, and we did see two reindeer, but they were penned so I don't think that counts.
• The weather was really nice. It was only rainy on the first part of the first day at sea, and in Juneau. The other days were sunny, mostly clear, and mostly not-cold.
• It's kind of bittersweet that most of those port towns are only still in existence because of the cruise lines. Ketchikan's claim to fame, other than being rainy, is to be home to the largest collection of native totem poles in the country. Or something similarly boring. Oh yeah, and it has a former bordello. Skagway is similarly tied to the gold rush, and also proudly boasts a former bordello, but has only about 300 year-round residents. The towns have otherwise no industry, nothing to do. The cruise ships come in, drop off 3,000 people who all flock into the same souvenir shops or cruise line-owned diamond and tanzanite stores, and sustain the few hundred locals. All of our tour guides were seasonal transplant workers as well. Most people book a shore excursion that takes more advantage of the wildnerness -- either ziplining (which is pretty fake, when you think about it), or riding the railroad, or taking a charter boat out for whale watching or sport fishing, or taking a seaplane or helicopter ride. And those trips are EXPENSIVE! So on the one hand, I'm really happy I got to see Alaska and do what we did, but it's definitely also weird to think that so much of it is either falsely extending the gold rush era or completely manufactured.
  
• Princess isn't a bad cruise line. The food was good but not outstanding. I think the next cruise line up is only about $100 more per person; next time I would be willing to spend that to see if the experience is significantly better. We had the cheapest room (bottom deck, forward), and you could definitely feel the boat moving and the motors running, but we didn't stay in the room all that much, and we were so tired at night that we slept through all the commotion.
• Weird Princess cruise lines thing: soda was not free. You could buy a can of soda for $1.75 (no way!) or purchase a seven-day all-you-can-drink pass for $30 (also no way!). So we didn't drink any soda, not that that's a bad thing at all. But when you CAN'T have it, you want it really badly. So in Juneau I popped into a drug store and bought myself a nice, cold can of Coke ("only" 85 cents).
  
• Some of the food highlights on the ship were Alaskan king crab legs (the waiter noticed that I was working through mine with gusto and offered me another serving; he will forever be in my good graces for that), lobster tails, and prime rib. And lots of fruit, including watermelon, strawberries, and papayas. Someone really knows what I like to eat, that's for sure. We also had Alaskan seafood chowder and reindeer chili.
  
• We went in the hot tub on the top deck almost every day, and I'm really glad we did. On one afternoon, we ran onto the deck in our shorts and flip-flops (it was pretty chilly) and one of the waiters exclaimed, "Good afternoon! Welcome to the Caribbean!" which was awesome. As was drinking cocktails in the hot tub in 40-degree weather.
  
• We played trivia almost every day as well; they usually had a late-morning/brunch-time trivia and another one around 4:30 pm. We always finished in the top two or three (20 questions, all sorts of random stuff), but there were a few other die-hard trivia groups in attendance as well to beat us. However, we finally won one morning, and earned four travel alarm clocks as our prize. Our crowning glory, though, was "Jeopardized Trivia," for which we came back from Victoria early and rushed through dinner to attend. We were the only team to get the correct answer for Final Jeopardy, and since most teams (including us) had bet it all, we ended up with a whopping $3,600, to claim the prize of two bottles of champagne! Woohoo!
• After the cruise got back to Seattle Sunday morning, we spent the day there, checking out Pike Place Market and some of the more notable neighborhoods. After a long day of plane rides back to BWI Monday, we finally got back to my parents' house for the night, and happily greeted Moxie and Mojo, who had been consorting with dogs for three weeks. Tuesday we drove for 12 hours back to Louisville, and today I made a tiny dent in all of the housework that needs to be done.
• Bad news: Even though I would be so tired every evening on the cruise that I would fall asleep by 9 pm at the latest (one night I fell asleep at 7 and slept a full 12 hours, which I haven't done in forever), I am now stuck on Alaska time, which means I'm wide awake at 2 am, feeling like it's 10 pm. Oh well.
• Overall, it was a great trip. It's been a rough few weeks, but I'm glad that it's over, glad that I survived, and really glad we went to Alaska. I'd definitely like to go back, maybe next time in more of a camping/wilderness mode. Maybe.
  

Plans for the rest of the week:

• More cleaning: dirty laundry to wash, clean laundry to put away (the worst part), cat hair to vacuum off the carpets
• More organizing: putting away every single textbook and packet of notes that was ripped from the bookcase over the last month, gathering donations for Goodwill, and figuring out something to do with my ever-growing pile of JAMAs (it just feels wrong to throw them away, but no one wants them, either)
• Movies to see: Spider-Man 3 (maybe it's at the $1 theater by now?), Pirates of the Caribbean, Knocked Up, and Harry Potter 4 (rental), among others.
• Tomorrow night we see The Lion King, which will be the final show for our 2006-2007 Broadway Series (sniff).
  
• Friday I'm going to Kings Island (that's the Ohio version of King's Dominion for you east-coasters) with some friends, and I'm quite excited. You might guess that since I was 100% excited about ziplining, that I like thrill rides. Rollercoasters and water slides are pretty much guaranteed happiness for me.

As is champagne won by being smart.