Prof. Will Lestrange

New Year's resolutions are really not my thing because, to me, they're "goal setting as a fashion, to be abandoned by the fifteenth of the month" (have you seen how busy Muggle gyms look in the first week of January? and how empty they are in February?) Further, the beginning of the new year always seems to feel like a ghost of the year gone by anyway; it takes a few weeks, or even months, for the new year to really "take shape" for the most part! No, to me it feels more right to continue on my current path as the calendar changes over to the New Year, waiting for clearer signs before changing course...

playing with volume down (to avoid bothering multiple chats I was multitasking with) was HARD!

1. In general, I am not a particular fan of the way Peanuts cartoons (which live as small images that can be quickly read) have been adapted to the 'Muggle' motion picture format; the longer length makes Charles Schulz's world feel almost "Lord of the Flies"-like in its cruelty at times... and the positioning of adults as trombones whose unintelligible orders nonetheless are consistently obeyed seems like a failed compromise between a kids-only paradise and a more 'normal' world. (Though I admit it becomes darkly ironic at times - for example, in A Boy Named Charlie Brown, many competitors often seem to be given the exact same "word" as sounds, but just choose to spell it differently. Could you win the spelling bee just by choosing a word you KNOW how to spell each round with the right syllables and intonation to match the trombone? That would totally be my strategy....) And that's not even getting into my thoughts about the season as a whole, especially in the past few years. But that said, I WILL say that I know that A Charlie Brown Christmas was almost single-handedly responsible for ending the aluminum Christmas tree fad in the Muggle world!

I still *HATE* this piece shape, just saying. But under fifteen minutes? I can't really complain!

https://i.imgur.com/iUQmj3w.jpg

*is sipping the end of a tasty, special hot chocolate from a recipe named after Rudolph - featuring flavours of peanut butter and peppermint* in any event, let's go through this: 1) As you can probably tell from my worse-than-guessing score on Day Four's quiz, I have not seen A Charlie Brown Christmas (and I do not think I have seen a lot of Muggle animated Christmas specials, for that matter). 2) Maybe the one at the end? Apparenly this is one of the few Charlie Brown related things with a happy ending? Since I like happy endings, I'll go for that. 3) *looks up plot and character list* - oh man, Miss Othmar isn't on the cast list? I always liked her, but... well... she's not on the cast, so we have to rule her out. But Linus seems like a good character in this for his role, so I'll just go ahead and pick him!

Curved Hanukkiah lines + monochrome + these weird piece shapes = surprisingly difficult for a 144 piece non-rotator! At least I got under half an hour...

*laughs* apparently I don't watch enough Muggle-animated Christmas specials!

[OUT OF CHARACTER] The last time I went to any sort of Halloween was back in 2018. Each of those three years, I would attend a trivia event - Harry Potter themed - with a small offshoot of my regular trivia team (tables were capped at 10). I would dress up as some sort of Slytherin each year, and the team leader dressed up as Nagini in 2018 (the year before she was Bellatrix; the year before that she was in a generic Ravenclaw costume). We had fun at the event, though we never actually won despite my trivia knowledge... and everyone had to leave early to catch the last train out of the city (is it too much to have working train service past 11 on Halloween night?) Unfortunately I did not get to do this any of the past four years; in 2019 it was preempted by the success of a local sports team, and this decade? Let's just say I had reasons to stay at home! No matter how much I looked forward to seeing how the leader of our offshoot trivia team would dress up next time...

I'm not a particular fan of Halloween movies, but - broadly defining "Halloween movies" to include any movies with scary themes or Halloween - the one I remember most is The Blair Witch Project, which I saw all the way back in 1999. The plot kept me engaged throughout, even though it was hard to follow what was going on at times and - well - there were things I didn't enjoy about it. The regional themed puns (e.g. comparing the "Blair Witch" to "Blair High School") were an added bonus as well, though! They gave me something to chuckle at while I tried to figure out what was going on...

November? For some reason I remembered that being the non-summer month that Finns like to leave the country to go on holiday...