He said he woke up this morning and looked at his feet and thought, "Why are my feet so far away from me?"

I remember thinking something similar about my boobs.

Yeah, they've said that there won't ever be direct messaging. Which, I suppose with a userbase well into two million, I could see why not. People chat in the general hall or the houses, but it's a little wonky.

I'm on there a good bit, because I am the sort of person who can type the same eight letters or whatever a million times in a row and not get bored. It's the same thing that used to make me a good coder.

When we took our nephew to the children's museum in Indianapolis, there was this one display about archaeology. There were two parts to it, one where you could use boards to build a wall, demonstrating how dig sites were shored up. The other part was about clearing debris. There were these big foam "boulders" that filled up this tunnel. The kids were supposed to dig the boulders out and cart them over to this chute.

Only the chute led directly back into the tunnel, with a certain amount of delay. So the kids inside the tunnel never noticed and the kids outside at the chute never communicated. Voila, endless play.

Only my nephew is the son of two linguists and is a smart cookie. After a while of happy play, he decided they weren't making enough progress, and perhaps the game needed to be taken up a level. So he started taking down the boards from the other section of the display and using them to block up the back of the tunnel so the boulders wouldn't keep coming down. He was organizing the other kids to help him hold up the boards. Of course, this stopped the actual progress of the play, but he didn't mind, and was near claiming total victory.

Over the game's designers, anyway.

I bring it up, because I feel like until more functionality opens up in Pottermore, that's kind of what's happening. Each of the houses is contentedly battling with each other to have the most points at any given moment. Only they do so at the risk of points to the other houses. So the overall point totals go up, but there's really no endgame. The players vaguely believe there will be a house cup awarded, but right now there's no real incentive from the game designers to have that happen.

And so we keep on carrying the boulders over to the chute.

I still think it's fun at the moment, though, so I don't mind the repetition. It's not infinitely renewable, though, and there are lots of things (like uses for the items, ways to earn galleons (a real economy), etc.) that would add to gameplay down the road. But I don't have any clear idea if any of that is intended.

The chapters were lovely, the art for the moments beautiful, and once I had all the books and objects and cards and coins, yeah, it was pretty much dueling. With the one most powerful spell. Over and over.

From way back, quoting Burell, I think:

Sending much love and strength to you and mac, msbelle, and to le n, Ginger, sumi and Maria. Egad universe, can you stop already?

Now it's almost 2 am and I should get some sleep.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that SyFy buried Treasure Island with so little publicity. If BBC America had got it, you know it'd have been properly promoted and run as a proper miniseries and less cut-up.

As it is, I didn't find out until it'd been on for an hour and a half, and that was because I was looking at last week's TV guide out of boredom. So I set the DVR to catch the repeats.

Timelies all!

Nova is in my lap, tenderizing my thigh. (Also chewing on my pajama buttons) Later today I go to get groceries.

Put cat food on the list.

For Sumi and Ple and anybody else who might care what Laura Hillenbrand's assessment of this year's Kentucky Derby might be:

I've watched every Derby since 1980. I admire the winner, but it was Bodemeister that really wowed me. Setting blistering fractions and then just keeping going was epic, astounding. I don't know that there has ever been a horse in Derby history to go so fast early and be anywhere close to the lead in the homestretch, much less holding the lead until the last few strides. He was brilliant.

The chapters were lovely, the art for the moments beautiful, and once I had all the books and objects and cards and coins, yeah, it was pretty much dueling. With the one most powerful spell. Over and over.

So you're saying I finally found a dueling partner only you're guaranteed to kick my ass every time. ha! But I do find dueling fun. But I am lousy about going for the most powerful spell as I am forever instead doing things like tickling spells. Because if you are dueling your own kids, you really need to be careful what hex you use.

I'm sort of disappointed with Pottermore. I'm ready for Book 2, you know? Mostly because there's not enough to do once you finish Book 1, and I can't get the potions or spells to work very well.

Laura,

Cat food is always on the list :). (Nova likes to chew on things, like buttons and earrings.)