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✿ Watched the 2015 remake of Poltergeist with the horror movie gang Friday evening. Verdict: It's not the worst remake out there, but it's nothing special, either. There were some nice extra touches in the form of callbacks to the original movie, and one of the kids got their own character arc in a way that was pretty well-done. But it isn't better than the original film, and it isn't one that I would suggest watching instead of the original. I'd mainly suggest watching it for those who have seen the 1982 Poltergeist and are curious about what a modern version might look like.

✿ Christ on a cracker, I can't believe it's already August. I have no idea where the rest of the year went. It just kind of zipped by. It's already starting to get dark at a reasonable time (around 9:30 PM, as opposed to around midnight). I'm kind of dreading autumn. The dark gets harder to deal with every year; when I was a kid, I didn't give a damn that in winter I'd be walking home from school in the dark. These days, it affects me way too much.

✿ August 1st is the anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Uprising. A few years ago, Sabaton released a song and music video about the event Uprising. It's a great song and a great video, I recommend watching it (though keep in mind it's obviously violent and such, due to the subject matter).

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✿ Simple pleasures: A bowl full of berries from the garden. When I was out doing the yardwork, I saw that our saskatoon bush was full of berries, and decided to take care of that. There were a few I couldn't reach, but that's all right, I'm sure the birds will appreciate them. Now I have all these berries in the fridge - not enough for a pie, but definitely enough for a batch of muffins or two. Nice. :D

✿ My friend Anneliese had commissions open, so I got her to draw the post-apocalyptic version of Hetalia Australia from my Mad Max crossover fic. <3 It looks great, I'm so happy with it. Since I was having trouble visualizing what he'd look like, it was nice to be able to completely hand the character design aspect off to someone who knows my tastes very well - that is, I basically said "You know Oz in that fic you liked? Yeah, draw him", pff. ...I kind of want to get her to draw another one of him and Max together. :D BUT all of her slots filled up on the first day, wow. I'm happy for her, though. (Gonna have to keep an eye out...) Aaaaand now I want to write more in that crossover universe, whups.

✿ I finally started reading Stand Still, Stay Silent. I'm going to try to do it as only one chapter per day, because I don't want to get overwhelmed by it. But so far, I like it! Even though I have only read the prologue so far, I have a few thoughts, mostly related to comparing it to A Redtail's Dream in terms of initial structure/pacing. But I'll tackle that on another day, because it's really late right now.

✿ I've been on my own for a week, as my parents went down to the lake for vacation. I did not accidentally set the house on fire. I kept up with the yard work. I did not lock myself out of the house. Everything is clean and tidy. Considering that I'm so scatterbrained that sometimes it's incredibly hard just to make sure that I leave the house with my head attached, I consider this a success.