Pride and Prejudice and Unicorns and Wasps

I’m annoyed with Word right now. Somehow I messed up the settings so it always wants to double-underline everything. Grr.

But actually that’s not what I was going to talk about at all.

First off, something funny: have you ever searched everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE, for something…and then found it right where it should be but you never thought to look?

I’m reading Pride and Prejudice for school. I have two copies: the nice hard-cover one my parents gave me for Christmas and the paperback one I can annotate. Mom wanted to borrow the hardback to re-read, so she asked me for it. About a week ago, actually.

I’d pulled it off the shelf and I couldn’t find it.

If you’ve ever seen my room—which, of course, you haven’t—this shouldn’t surprise you. Here, I’ll take a photo.

No no no, I wanted Photo Booth, not iPhoto. Whoops.

Ah, here we go.

Darn you, Word, I did NOT want this underlined. Ah, that’s better.

Anyway, I searched on and off all weekend. All long Thanksgiving weekend, actually, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. Then tonight, since I’ve got all my homework done, I ask Mom if I can watch a Doctor Who.

Here’s how my watching Doctor Who works: I ask at the beginning of the weekend. Mom says “Maybe, if you get all your homework done.” I do all my homework (or I DON’T do all my homework and subsequently don’t watch Doctor Who). After I’ve done my homework, I ask again. Mom assigns an additional chore or two (usually stuff that she already told me to do and I forgot about). I do the last chore(s), and finally, FINALLY I can watch Doctor Who.

This time the additional chore was, as you may have guessed, finding Pride and Prejudice. So I donned my gas mask, protective radioactivity suit and heavy-duty gloves and looked through my room again.

After about five minutes, I hadn’t found it, so I put on my deerstalker. (I actually do have a deerstalker, by the way.)

Anyway, what was I saying?

Oh yes, finding Pride and Prejudice. Let me renumerate the facts of the case, Watson. Did I spell renumerate right? No, I did not. Wait, is that even the word I should be using?

Imaginary Watson: Ahem. The facts?

Right. The facts: The book was in my room when I last saw it. I have searched extensively and have not found it. Therefore, I must have moved it. Add to this the fact that I have a bad short-term memory and the probability of my having moved it increases dramatically.

I walked out of the room to check my parents’ room…and suddenly spotted it on my own bookshelf.

To be fair, there was a Madame Alexander doll in front of it. So I can’t be totally blamed for not seeing it the first twenty-three times I looked…right?

Anyway, happy ending: I found it. And there was much rejoicing. Mainly by me, because I now got to watch the Doctor Who episode. Yaaay!

I love Doctor Who, but I only got into it this summer, so I have a lot of catching up to do. I’m currently on the Tenth Doctor, who is absolutely crazy and brilliant and wonderful. Donna Noble, by the way, is my favorite companion thus far. God, she is funny…

I’m in the 4^th season, so the episode I watched was The Unicorn and the Wasp.

I had heard that it was pretty bad, but I quite enjoyed it. Sure, the plotline was pretty silly and didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and yes, some of the minor roles were over-acted a bit, and the whole thing was over-dramatic, but I like silly things and I like the 1920s and I like murder mysteries, so it was a good episode for me. The mystery kept me guessing and the actual villain took me by surprise. I think they were trying to parody a cliché of a murder mystery and they very nearly pulled it off.

Tomorrow I’m going to return The Big Sleep, which I never had time to finish but kept forgetting to return, to the school library and check out an Agatha Christie mystery because now I am really curious about them. I wonder if Clue was based off of her work? (Professor Peach, in the library, with the lead pipe…)

I’m a little bit nervous about the next episode, The Silence in the Library. I’ve got a vague idea of what to expect from the Chameleon Circuit song Count the Shadows (Chameleon Circuit, by the way, is a Doctor Who themed band. They started Trock, or Time Lord rock), but that’s not the problem. The problem is that my friend Sally* says that this episode will forever change the way I see libraries…kind of like Blink forever changed the way I look at statues.

I love libraries. Libraries are my friends. Seriously, if I’m stressed out, direct me to the nearest library or bookstore. The presence of books comforts me. I could spend hours in the library. Actually, I HAVE spent hours in the library. I have two libraries close to my house. The librarians of the one within walking distance know me by name and the librarians of the one within 10-minute driving distance know me by sight. (“Oh, hey, it’s that weird girl who always checks out sixteen books at a time…I wonder how many late fees she’s paying today?”) I don’t want to be scared when I walk into a library!

But the other problem is that I can’t skip the episode because it has all kind of important plot stuff. Yays. I’m all for important plot stuff.  But must they do it in a big scary library?!

I’m messing with you, you know. I’m sure it won’t be too bad. Nothing can ever change my love of libraries. YOU HEAR THAT, LIBRARIES? NOTHING CAN STOP OUR LOVE!

Just being silly now…good grief, is it that time already? I need to get to sleep.

By the way, this blog post is being written on the night of Sunday the 25^th. I’ll post it on Monday the 26^th when I actually have internet access.

*I decided to use pseudonyms for my friends, to protect their privacy. Sally is not actually my friend’s name; I chose it because it’s phonetically similar to her name and also as a Doctor Who reference: Sally as in Sally Sparrow. More on pseudonyms later, when people actually start reading this.