Every year Harry Potter Fan Fiction (HPFF) pulls an April Fool’s Day prank on the archieve and the forums.  Last year they turned the entire site into a site devoted only to Harry/Cho and Sirius/Lily ships (short for relationships, basically only stories where Harry & Cho and Sirius & Lily go out).  It was my first prank on that site (I’d only been a member for a few days) and I completely fell for it.  They left it up for a few days, so a lot of people thought it was real.

Ever since then I’d been anticipating this year’s prank because I knew I would not fall for it.  Sure enough, Tuesday evening, HPFF turned into TwilightSauce.  It became a fan fiction site devoted to Twilight.  This is especially funny because a lot of Harry Potter fans can’t stand Twilight.  I like them both, although nothing will ever come close to my Harry Potter obsession.  The TwilightSauce site is actually incredibly funny, if you care to check it out.  It’s still up.  But the admins put HPFF back up yesterday.  A lot of people fell for it, but I was just laughing.  This was the best prank I’ve seen them pull.

I haven’t done a Thursday Thirteen in a while, mainly because I can’t think of anything.  So, today I’m just going to post thirteen random things.

1.  I watched a movie in Creative Writing today that was about a Nursing Home Beauty Pageant.   It was possibly the strangest thing I have ever seen in my life.  I could have done without the scene where the old lady put on her stockings.

2.  I am very addicted to MyLeaky, The Leaky Cauldron’s newest form of online communication.

3.  Benny ate half of a homemade bread the other day, because my mom didn’t put it in the microwave when she left.  The only reason he didn’t eat the whole thing is because there was only half of it left.  I’m just happy he didn’t eat the tin foil it was wrapped in.

4.  It is very cold today, yet sunny.  It is going to be 40 degrees on Saturday, which is pretty much a heatwave for Upstate NY in the beginning of February.

5.  They keep the dorm rooms way too warm at night.  The heat is on too high if you have to kick off your blankets when you’re trying to get to sleep in February.  Why don’t they turn it down and save money?

6.  I am not very good at the drums on Rock Band 2.  I am decent at the guitar and not very good at the singing.

7.  I have to write a 3 page paper about research methods for psychology, but not in my Research Methods class.  It is for my Honors class.  That means I have done research methods in every single class this semester except Creative Writing.  Maybe I can write a story about how much I detest research methods and then I will have done something involving it in every one of my classes.

8.  Dr. Foreman did something incredibly stupid on House on Monday.  Something that could have cost him his medical license and probably would have if it had been done in real life.  But since it was House, he was able to keep his license.  Also, 13 (another doctor) got cancer due to Foreman’s stupidity, but was cured the same day she was diagnosed.

9.  My iBook’s battery is dying and I will soon have to purchase another one.  However, my bro informed me that 2.5 hours is a perfectly acceptable amount of time for a battery to last.  He would think this since he does not have a Mac.

10.  I have a bunch of pictures to post of Benny, but have not done so because uploading pictures to WordPress takes forever due to the fact that you can only upload one at once.  Also, WordPress no longer lets me post pictures from Photobucket, which drives me insane.

11.  LeakyCon is less than four months away!  I cannot wait to meet other people who are obsessed with Harry Potter as I am.

12.  I have way too many classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

13.  Nobody has shown up to my tutoring sessions for Statistics yet.  This might be due to the insanely early hour I hold them.  Nobody wants to do Statistics at eight in the morning.  Thus, the three sessions I have had so far were in essence study halls for me.

My mom and sister went grocery shopping today and left Benny home alone.  They were almost out of the neighborhood when my mom realized she left her list at home.  So they drove back and my sister ran in to get the list.

She got in the house and didn’t see Benny anywhere.  Then she grabbed the list and started to look for him.  He was standing on our dining room table!  Just standing there doing nothing!  So my sister scold him and told him to get off.

And what did he do?  He peed on the table and then got down.  Ew.  We eat on that table.  He went out just before they left, too.  We think it was more of a submissive/scared type of peeing.  He used to do that a lot when we first got him.  I think he was just scared that he got caught.  But that is seriously so disgusting.

Benny has always been too smart for his own good.  This is most obvious when he figures out how to open the refrigerator or get past two different kinds of baby locks in order to get into the garbage.

Because of this, it amazes me how stupid he can be sometimes.  Benny has always had a bit of an addiction to snow and ice and the stuff seriously makes him high.  He runs around outside sticking his nose in snow banks, eating a big mouthful of snow, and then jumps up with the strangest look in his eyes that can only be described as being high.

His habit of snow and ice eating is hysterical, but can be a bit irritating.  The amount of snow and ice he eats is directly related to how often we must take him outside to pee.  Yet, when he goes outside to pee, he eats more snow and ice and we get into a vicious cycle of snow eating and hourly trips outside.

But I can handle that.  I can handle the huge amount of pee trips he must make to rid himself of all the snow he eats.  What I don’t like is when he eats rock salt!  Yes, this dog eats rock salt!  He walks long the road and eats snow, ice, and rock salt!  It’s all mixed up with the snow, so he eats that as well.  How can that taste good?!

Rock salt is obviously not meant to be consumed.  Yesterday, Benny must have eaten a lot of it and wound up puking on our Oriental rug twice.  Why he feels the need to puke on that rug of all the flooring in our house is beyond me.  If he had just moved two feet, he would have puked on the hardwood floor instead.

I have no idea what possesses him to eat rock salt.  It’s disgusting and he pukes it up, which is more disgusting.  And he doesn’t learn from it, either.  He pukes it up and then wants to go outside and eat more.

The Thursday Thirteen website seems to not be available today, but I am posting a Thursday Thirteen anyway.   So, here are thirteen of my favorite  websites.  They are in no particular order and I have excluded my favorite blogs from the list.

1.  J.K. Rowling’s Website.  Not only is this the website of my favorite author, it is one of the best designed websites I have ever encountered.  It’s unique and interactive and I have spent hours at a time exploring it.  Plus, the little extra bits of Harry Potter information that are scattered throughout the site make any Harry Potter fan’s day.

2.  Broomsticks and Owls is the first Harry Potter related message board I ever joined.  I have been a member there for over two years now.  It has a very close-knit feeling to it, as it is very small.  But, we’re very welcoming to new members and always appreciate them!  I like all the Harry Potter forums I’m a member of, but this one will always be special to me.

3.  Petfinder.  Without Petfinder, we never would have found Benny, so that one is self-explanatory.  It is great to be able to look at listings for pets that are far away from your house.

4.  Harry Potter Fan Fiction.com is where I ‘publish’ my fan fiction and read numerous other wonderful stories.  I spend a lot of time there and it has definitely helped with my post Deathly Hallows Potter withdrawal.

5.  The Leaky Cauldron.  What can I say about Leaky?  Well, it is my favorite place to go for Harry Potter related news.  Plus, it has a forum and TLC is organizing a Harry Potter convention, which I plan on attending.

6.  Dogster.  Because any site where people can create profiles for their pets and then talk to other pet owners while pretending to be their pet is brilliant.

7.  Harry Potter Fan Fiction Forums.  As affiliated with #4.  It’s where all of us fan fic writers go to talk about our stories with people who actually get it.  Plus, if it weren’t for that forum, I am sure I never would have completed my NaNo.

8.  The Harry Potter Lexicon.  Despite the lawsuit between it’s owner, Steve Vander Ark and J.K. Rowling, I would be lying if I said this site wasn’t one of my favorites.  It’s an invaluable resource for fan fiction writers, who don’t want to spend hours leafing through the books to find out a tiny bit of information needed for a story.  However, I must note that I did not support Vander Ark’s side of the lawsuit.  A book form of this website is blatant copyright infringement and completely unfair to J.K. Rowling.

9.  Bored.com.  Anytime I have a few minutes to do absolutely nothing, I can always count on this site to provide me with useless entertainment.

10.  PotterCast.  Because what Harry Potter fan wouldn’t want to listen to an hour of Potter-related stuff once a week?  I won’t say much about PotterCast in this post, as I plan on devoting an entire post to it in the near future.

11.  MuggleNet Fan Fiction.  This was the first fan fiction website I came upon and it introduced me to what spawned into quite the addiction.  Although I like the way HarryPotterFanFiction is designed better, I still read stories on MNFF and enjoy every one of them.

12.  Capitol Steps.  The songs they have on this site are absolutely brilliant.  It’s a must visit for anyone interested in making fun of the hysterical people who run our country.  No politician is save from their parody skills.

13.  Things My Dog Ate.  This site is a must see for anyone who has a dog who destroys things.  It’ll make you laugh and probably feel better about the kind of destruction your dog inflicts upon your house.  Plus, Benny is on that site.

Anyone sensing a pattern with these?

I haven’t blogged much about Benny lately, so a post about him is long overdue.  First, he got into the garbage again the other week.  Second, he opened the bathroom door the other day and got into that garbage.  The strange thing was was that my bro came home and found that mess and the bathroom light on.  How did Benny turn on a light?  Nobody thinks they accidentally left the light on.

Then, my family was dropping Benny off at the kennel on Friday because they came to my school for the weekend.  My bro was in the kennel with Benny in the waiting room, waiting for him to be taken in.  Someone else came into the waiting room with their dog, who was barking and growling and jumping around.  My bro told me that the guy who owned that dog looked at Benny and said to his own dog “Why can’t you be calm like that dog?”

It cracked me up when my bro told me that.  Yes, Benny was being calm in the waiting room.  He’s usually relatively calm in there, but the fact that someone else called him calm was hysterical.  As most of you know, Benny is anything but calm.  I’m pretty sure that’s the first time he’s been called calm before.  The kennel people have told us that he has doggy ADHD while he’s there.

I woke up this morning to the sound of Benny running around the house like a crazy dog.  He always has excess energy when he comes in from his morning walk and this morning was no different.  As I was laying in bed, trying to get back to sleep, I heard a crash coming from the living room and heard my mom saying ‘Oh, Benny…’

I was very curious about what he broke, but not curious enough to drag myself out of my bed.  A few hours later I got up and went downstairs.  My mom told me that Benny had jumped from the couch and over the coffee table in front of it!  He often jumps over my parents bed, without even touching it, but he’s never jumped over the coffee table before.

As he was jumping over it, his foot knocked off this porcelain candy dish and it fell on the floor and broke.  My mom has now removed all the breakable things from the coffee table.  It’s like having a little kid.  Benny may be almost 5, but he’s still acting like a puppy.

Tonight, everyone in my family had someplace to go.  My youngest sister was going to the sixth grade dance, my other sister was going to play rehearsal, my bro’s play was being performed tonight (I’m seeing it tomorrow), my dad went to go watch it, and my mom and I went grocery shopping.

My mom, both sisters, and I left around six.  My bro had left an hour earlier.  My dad was leaving sometime after we left.  We dropped my youngest sister off at a friend’s house before the dance, and she realized she left her ticket to the dance at home.  Of course.  So, we had to drive back home.  It wasn’t very far, but in the days where gas is almost $4 a gallon, well, it is $4 for the super premium, any small bit of driving is a pain.  We get home and my sister runs into the house to get her ticket.  However, she was sidetracked by the mess that was left on the oriental rug in the living room.

An empty bag of bread and an empty container of feta cheese.  Yup, you guessed it, Benny got into the fridge once again.  There had been a half loaf of bread in that bag.  It’s the same bread that he’s eaten a couple times before, he must really like it.  The cheese container was practically empty when we left the house, so he didn’t get much.  I ran into the house after I heard my sister shout this out the door and saw the garbage on the rug.  I threw it away and went to the fridge.  Sure enough, it was unlocked.  My dad forgot to lock it.  He also forgot to put the shoes that were sitting near the door away.  But, luckily for the persons who those shoes belonged to, Benny was too distracted by the unlocked fridge to indulge in the leather chew toys, aka shoes, that were near the door.

…Actually, I can. You’ve probably guessed that this is about Benny. Today, my mom made a cheese cake. It had a oreo cookie crust and was topped with dark chocolate chips. She put it in the fridge before we went out to dinner. We thought we locked the fridge. Turns out, we did put the lock on, but it didn’t latch because the fridge was overly stuffed with gallons of milk that I bought after work.

So, Benny opened it while we were gone and ate the entire cheesecake. Yup, the whole thing! He also opened up a bag of bread, but didn’t eat it. He must have been stuffed from the cheese cake. He didn’t eat the chicken that was in there, either.

What a pig. I think he is part pig, goat, and dog.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before I wrote an entry about Benny. Today, he somehow managed to get into the office while we were gone. He decided it would be fun to empty all the garbage cans in there and eat some of the tissues. Yuck. He also pulled some stuff out of my book bag, but luckily he didn’t eat anything from it. It could have been a lot worse. He left all the computers alone, thank goodness. That would have been bad. But, I only found one of my dad’s slippers. It was sitting on the rug in the living room along with one of his boots and a piece of the inside of the other slipper. I can’t find that slipper anywhere, so I have a feeling he ate it. A whole slipper! Slippers don’t digest properly, we found that out when he ate part of another slipper. But this was a whole slipper. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens. There isn’t much this dog won’t eat.

Here is a picture of the office when I came home.

And here is the living room, where I found the first slipper.

And here is a picture of the not so innocent mutt afterwards.