The · Joiner

War of the Worlds was good. Tom Cruise did an acceptable job with his part (he plays an asshole well), the precocious little girl was a bit too stoic to be believed, and I didn't really buy the relationship between Cruise and his teenaged son. Other than that, some good, tense moments. I might've bruised the mate's hand, but lately I've been really squeamish and jumpy during the most tame horror films, so don't judge the action by me.

If I'd had my druthers, I would've picked Charlie, but the mate went quietly along with me to get a midnight copy of Harry Potter so no complaints here. And WotW wasn't bad or anything.

The midnight release of HP was crazy. I'm glad I got to go, because now I've been to a midnight release of a book people lined up and waited for hours to buy, but I've got the badge now and don't feel a need to ever repeat the experience. It was so hot, and the inside of the store was humid with all the bodies, and there were little kids running around shrieking (really never having children, really never) and the clerks were crabby and ill equipped to deal with the volumes of people (despite having expected those people). Whole thing could've used a decent event planner.

We only have a few weeks until our lease is up, and we just found out they've raised our rent way beyond affordable (even more so than it is now) and the next lease is a year instead of seven months. There isn't time to find another place and it being 116 degrees during the day, not exactly prime conditions to move, so we'd have to hire actual movers to do the carrying. The billion dollars it would cost is less than the cost of the increase in rent for a year, but not by enough to justify the effort of moving. There's just not enough time. Pretty down about it, actually, I love the house but it isn't mine and a year lease only means we're stuck in this city another year.