When you work on a holiday

Holidays refuse to be ignored, even if you're too busy to notice them. Even if you don't celebrate them. And even if you have to go into the office.

Something about the eerie lack of noise and the drop in temperature due to fewer bodies to combat the overly excited air conditioner is sending my thoughts into a bajillion different directions.

So here we have another lovely bullet-point blog post.

• What is the proper spelling for bajillion? The only spelling suggestions I'm getting are "bazillion" and "billion." I get that "bajillion" is the Old Spice version of the word "bazillion," but it really should get its own place in the dictionary. "Ginormous" is an acceptable word now, so why can't "bajillion" be?
• I have acquired a new softball-related battle wound. This one is on the palm of my right hand. The ball hit me so hard that it left a blue smudge on my hand, which I'm guessing came from the stitching, or maybe the words "Murray YSA stake" written in blue marker. (Grounders are mean, you guys.) The budding bruise is roughly half the size of my cell phone. I may post a picture in a few days when it's more impressive looking.
• I can't believe it's only Wednesday. For the amount of work I've done this week, it really should be Friday by now.
• I did decently well on my MuggleNet O.W.L.s this year (which, by the way, are really difficult, especially if you don't study or cheat). I only failed four classes (Ancient Runes, Astronomy, History of Magic, and Magical Creatures) and I got an Exceeds Expectations in Muggle Studies. My grades in seven of the classes improved from last year, so I'm feeling pretty good about myself.
• My home teachers came over on Sunday and were impressed by my Harry Potter paraphernalia. For fun, they decided to ask me a really hard trivia question: Who let the troll into Hogwarts? (Incidentally, this is one of the level-one questions in my homemade trivia game. The multiple choice options are something like (a) Quirrell, (b) it flew in, (c) Tyrel, and (d) something else weird). It was really hard not to laugh when one guy blurted, "Neville!"
• I just subscribed to The New Yorker. That's the third literary magazine I've subscribed to this year. Some people get cable; others just read too much.
• I hate Gmail's new categories thing. I already had a perfectly good system set up with all my folders. Now I have to sort through three different tabs to get all my emails into the right folders, which adds a lot more clicking to my life. I bet doctors hate this "improvement" too.
• After two sleepless nights and three days of the worst allergies I've had all year, I now know what happens when you take Benadryl that has passed its expiration date (even if it's only by a couple months): instead of knocking you out and curing your symptoms so you can breathe and stop scratching your nose, it puts you in an unpleasant, drugged-but-alert state for six hours and does nothing to relieve your suffering.
• I am not planning on reading The Cuckoo's Calling. For those of you who live under a rather large boulder, that's the book that J.K. Rowling published under pseudonym Robert Galbraith that no one knew about before we found out who Robert Galbraith really was, but now it's the #1 bestseller on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Book List. I can't decide if this annoys me or not.
• I think my maximum capacity for summer enjoyment is two months. Even with the rough winter we had, I started longing for fall in mid-July, right on schedule.
• I've had a very "balanced" summer, though. Meaning I got the right amount of work, school, play, and socializing in. Usually my summers are very lopsided with work and play, but school and social activities have balanced things wonderfully.
• I can't decide if I want to buy season 2 of Once Upon a Time.
• I killed the biggest fly in the world on my bathroom mirror yesterday. Its splattered remains were about a mile wide. Or the size of a quarter, same diff.
• Karl Malone turns 50 today. He's almost as ancient as my dad. :)
• Why is the world so obsessed with William and Kate? Also, I don't think it's fair that Kate Middleton is flawlessly beautiful in every possible way.