On a whim, I went to the theater and saw Hairspray today. Such negative expectations, you have no idea. The original movie is one of my top 20 favorite movies ever, and I was all curmudgeonly resistant to any sort of messing with that. Oh my God. I laughed so hard I made an ass of myself, from about two-and-a-half minutes in — best John Waters cameo ever — until the very end. Weeping with glee, afraid that I’d choke on my popcorn.

It has all the controlled hyper-energy of the best old pop music, with a healthy dash of the subversiveness that made the original so very awesome. There were moments so surreal — Christopher Walken in mariachi finery, twirling around John Travolta in 300-pound-drag — that I’m still a little boggled.

I feared Travolta most, and maybe I’ve been brainwashed, but he was… great. Great. I’m not sure what that accent was, since he sounded more like Dr. Evil than any Baltimorean I’ve ever heard, but I’ll give it a pass. He was a creature entirely separate from Divine, as he should have been. Everyone else in the cast is pitch-perfect, and, as it was in 1988, it was fantastic to see the chubby girl get the guy.

Charmed against my will! What a great way to end the weekend.

Both political parties have tried to govern on the cheap, and both have dithered and dallied and spent public wealth on stadiums while scrimping on the basics.

A thousand miles away, and I’ve been trying to explain the magnitude of the bridge collapse to my coworkers. It’s actually the interstate, I said, not really the bridge-bridge you’re picturing. Eventually, the published photos caught up with what I knew of the magnitude of it and they were able to mostly understand.

In typical geekish fashion, I found out about it not soon after it happened, on Metafilter. Ran around in circles for a moment before frantically calling my sister, who is fine, although a coworker is among the missing.

I work tangentially with the civil engineering industry as part of my job, and I’ve been reading for years about crumbling infrastructure, about reports unheeded or willfully misinterpreted, about where the blame falls when structures fail. If this isn’t a wakeup call, I don’t know what is.

The anxiety/OCD-grooming bald patch has grown in nicely. The bum thyroid is gone. He gained two pounds in the month after the surgery, due to changes in his activity level and metabolism and whatnot. The vet assures me that he’s really not portly — he’s a Clydesdale and carries the weight like a champ, but I still felt like a bad cat person.

The bladder infections have ceased to be an issue, due to the nice Wysong Uretic he’s been eating. The floor-peeing has mostly, save for one extraordinarily hysterical relapse, stopped. It went a little something like this.

Thursday
4:30 AM
Haggis: Meh. Meh. Meh. Meow. Meow. Meow. [pees on kitchen floor]
Louisa: Hey, he just did something bad. Again. Because he is bad. Give me a treat.
Me: I’m dreaming. [Mops.]

Friday
4:30 AM
Haggis: Meh. Meh. Meh. Meow. Meow. Meow. [pees on kitchen floor]
Louisa: Ha ha. Bad. Again. Give me a treat.
Me: Why? Whyyyyyy? [Mops.]

Saturday
4:30 AM
Haggis: Meh. Meh. Meh. Meow. Meow. Meow. [pees on kitchen floor]
Me: WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN YOUR NICE NEW CLEAN LITTERBOX, HAGGIS MCBAGGIS? [Weep. Mops.]
Louisa: Heh. Give me a treat.

1:00 PM
Purchase fancy Cat Attract cat litter, supposedly irresistible to fickle felines. Spend afternoon boiling the hell out of litterbox, and muttering incantations against further inappropriate whizzing.

Sunday
4:30 AM
Haggis: Meh. Meh. Meh. Meow. Me–
Me: Ah ha! [Swoop in, groggily, hoist him gently in the air, and gently, ever so gently, as if he is sprung from the wings of tiny angels, set him down in magical new cat litter.]
Haggis: –ow? [Goes into what can only be described as a trance of contentment, staring at wall. Paws at magical new litter. Pees in litterbox.]
Me: I LOVE YOU. [Weep at victory. Feel somewhat used, as I have very definitely become personal toilet assistant, but am mostly gladdened to not be mopping at the buttcrack of dawn.]
Louisa: Sucker. Give me a treat.

Monday
4:30 AM
Haggis: Meh. Meh. Meh. Meow. Me–
Me as Jeeves: Good Morning, Little Lord Haggisroy, sir. Might I have the pleasure of escorting you to your toilet? I assure you the facilities are most accommodating, especially at this delightful predawn hour. You will find that I have groomed the grounds in your favorite zen garden style, and I know that you will be pleased to discover that you are the first to acquaint yourself with the facilities this morning. [Repeat gentle conveyance of yesterday.]
Haggis: –ow! [Pees in litterbox.]
Me as Jeeves: Yes indeed, sir.
Louisa: Give me a treat.

Tuesday
4:30 AM
Haggis: [Pees in litterbox.]
Me: Zzzzzzzz.
Louisa: Zzzzzzzzz.

So he’s been fine since yesterday, and, fingers crossed, that soggy situation is now behind us. Who the hell carries their cat to a litterbox? Now you know.

Oh, Harry. I skipped out of work early to catch a matinee of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Jay and Katie. While this film didn’t have the resonance that Goblet of Fire did for me — I was a wreck for the last 20 minutes of that film, even though of course I knew what was coming — I loved it.

- Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange. Oh yes. I think she was on screen for a total of about forty seconds. Her reaction to mortally zapping Sirius — pious regret, faked, giving way to wacky, wicked, horrible, crowing glee. Loved it. She is my favorite actress in the known universe and when she took over the role, I seriously just about wet my pants. So to say that was a highlight is understating it. We’d better get to see more of her in the DVD deleted scenes and in the next films or else I will throw a tantrum.

- Luna Lovegood. Oddly, I got a little choked up every time she showed up. As much as I enjoy the Potter books, the Harry-Ron-Hermione trifecta bothers me a little. If I was at Hogwarts, I would be more like Luna Lovegood than any of our glorious heroes. Harry, Ron and Hermione wouldn’t even know my name even though I sat next to them in Potions and handed Harry that piece of burdock root he dropped that time. Actually no, I would be more like a miserable pimpled Slytherin greaser, but I’d like to think a more enlightened me would have been like Luna. Speaking of which…

- So, SO glad to not have to soak in the bad-guy-caricature Draco and the Gang snoozefest. We get it. They’re creepy and bad. A couple of montage moments, one cliche confrontation, and whew, no more. Until the Half-Blood Prince rolled along, Draco’s single snotty dimension was a major flaw that just annoyed the ever-living hell out of me. I’m glad this film left that alone.

- Snape. “Obviously.”

Loved the flashbacks to the earlier films, especially during Snape’s mindreading lessons. Sirius’s demise didn’t have the effect on me I thought it would. As I said, I thought Cedric’s death in Goblet was just unbearable to watch, with the obliviously cheering crowd and Harry’s horrifying clutch on Cedric’s corpse. Sirius kicks it and I was sorta… meh, there he goes, beyond the veil. I blubbered at that point during the book, so it took me out of the moment to not be so affected.

So I was reduced to teariness whenever Luna mentioned nargels, but the death of a major beloved character didn’t slay me. What’s up with that? Maybe I really am a Slytherin greaseball at heart.

And now to reread Half-Blood Prince to prepare for the next book. I’m actually going to go pick it up at midnight. Somebody ring up my 2002-era self, so she can get a good laugh out of her future self’s weirdness.