More work, frisbee, movies, reading, etc. We finally put our apartment on craig’s list instead of just the Yale housing site. It seems that no one uses that any more: we only had it up for two days, and we got about 12 inquiries from craig’s list, so we won’t have to worry about not finding a tenant any more. And we’ve been assigned an apartment in Storrs, so it looks like there’s no way out of moving now.

Obviously, though, the most exciting thing in the last week was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Faith read it on Saturday, and I almost read it Sunday, but had to leave 40 pages for Monday. As everyone knew it would, it continues the dark tone of book V, but I definitely liked it better. I think that’s mostly because Harry was only an annoying, self-centered brat for one year (which is thankfully over by the beginning of book VI). And all the right romances blossom, too (you know the ones).

Faith and I saw Wedding Crashers, which is remarkably funny (though quite legitimately ‘R’). You already know pretty much the entire plot from the previews, and there aren’t any surprises in the characters of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, since they’re the exact same ones they play in every other movie. But that never stopped me from liking any other Owen Wilson movie. I can’t really describe it better than this.

On the other end of the spectrum, we waited for two movies to come out on video, and we should have waited longer (until it was free on TV for the first, until never for the second); Constantine was only slightly worse than I expected, but Man of the House was simply awful.

Somewhere in the middle, and really a pleasant surprise, was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. After about ten minutes of Depp’s Wonka, I was on the path to being extremely disappointed. But then it started to grow on me. It’s a completely different character than Gene Wilder‘s, but by the end, it makes a lot of sense and is in some ways more compelling. Oddly enough, the part of the story that really fails and fall short of the earlier version is the additionally backstory for Wonka’s childhood, which is awkward and ultimately unneccesary.

Reading: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, plus a little of each of The Left Hand of Darkness, Timaeus, Kepler’s Witch, and Creative Evolution

Listening: Barenaked Ladies, Blaster the Rocketman

Watching: Wedding Crashers, Constantine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Man of the House