I can’t believe it’s almost Thanksgiving! I’m going to be taking the rest of the week off from posting since I want to get some writing done and something has to go to free up time for travel and hanging out with the family. Today is for working my way through the pre-holiday checklist. I’ve had my tires rotated and have bought a birthday gift for my mother (she has a Thanksgiving-week birthday) and a Christmas gift for my brother (since we probably won’t overlap at Christmas), and now the laundry is going.

I went to see the new Fantastic Beasts movie on Friday, and I may need a refresher re-read of the Harry Potter books because I’d forgotten who a lot of the people from that era were to recognize how they linked to the generation from this series. Like, there was one big revelation that I got an entirely different meaning out of until I read something online and realized that I’d mixed up some things and had the timeline off.

I’m hoping now that things are set up that the future films can focus more on the characters because that’s where the strength of this series is. Newt is such a refreshing hero because he doesn’t have any of the usual “hero” traits. He’s shy, somewhere on the autistic spectrum (Eddie Redmayne confirmed that this is the way he’s playing him), not at all interested in power or glory or being considered brave. He just wants to take care of his creatures and have a world where creatures and people are treated well, but when something threatens that, he’ll step up.

Jude Law is one of those actors I don’t think of as a favorite, but I seem to really like him in everything I see him in. He makes a good younger Dumbledore. It’s fun getting to see Hogwarts in various other eras.

But at the same time, I wasn’t particularly blown away by the movie. I don’t know if I was in the wrong frame of mind, if I was hungry (I’d planned on getting popcorn and had eaten lunch accordingly, but couldn’t get any service at the concession stand and gave up), or if I was distracted by the book I’m writing that kept trying to play itself out in my head while I was watching the movie.

It’s great that this book is so alive in my head. It makes writing it like taking dictation. But it’s also a pain because it makes it difficult to enjoy anything else.

Have a happy Thanksgiving! See you next week.