(no subject)

[camwyn]

Did my first Central Park circuit with Empire Skate Club in years last night. That's, mmm, six miles, I think. Start from Columbus Circle, follow the loop around the entire middle of the park, end at CC again.

There's a shortcut around 110th or so, maybe a bit earlier- I forget exactly. It cuts across the park and usually about half the skaters take the shortcut and wait for the rest on the other side.

I did not take the shortcut, despite being completely out of shape.

I'm still physically tired despite going to bed early last night, but that's okay. This tired comes from successfully negotiating the reason many of the skaters take the shortcut. It's not the distance that gets them. It's the fact that there's a slope that goes up and up and up and up and up and SWEET MOTHER OF GOD WHEN IS THE UPGRADE GOING TO STOP. They call it Cardiac Hill.

I made it. Yay me.

Gonna be there next Thurs. too if at all possible.

***

On another note I have actually gotten off my arse and begun writing the next WYGO? chapter. Art Weasley's currently waiting for the damned meeting with Aloyisius Nacknouck to finish, and very shortly he will get Peter Venkman's hand on his shoulder and hear the words, "Walk with me, Arthur, talk with me", but in the meantime can anyone enlighten me as to just what sort of personal timepieces wizards use?

Comments

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

Yay! I've been waiting for new WYGO. And H:H (there haven't been any new chapters that I've missed, have there?)

I recall Dumbledore taking out some sort of funky looking pocketwatch, so maybe they use pocket watches. With demons in them! (oh, wait, that's Discworld)

[camwyn]

No, no new H:H chapters yet. I'm going to do the next one after the WYGO? chapter. John's first day of classes, yay.

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

I have this lovely image of a miniature sundial inside a pocket watch, with a tiny orbiting sun that appears when you flick open the lid. I don't believe canon has much to say on the subject, though.

Rah rah for Cardiac Hill.

ClassicDrogn has a rather poor memory

[(Anonymous)]

Wasn't there some charm that made glowing numbers float out of the caster's wand to tell the time? It might have been a fanfic thing. The only watch I remember from canon is Dumbledore's (arg, I can't remember the actual word for them...) planets-and-moons one, but I've seen some convincing arugments that it was actually a more complex and developed cousin of a time-turner, involved with the Ministry's Department of Temporal Adjustment and a bunch of speculative events during the day between the destruction of Godric's Hollow and Harry being dropped off at the Dursleys'. Now, granted, that's no more official than if you were to declare that yes, wrist-strap-mounted.... whatever the damn word is's were the standard wizarding timepeice, when 'dawn' 'morning' 'noonish' 'afternoon' 'evening' and the corresponding lunar rise/set cycle aren't enough. The wizarding world operates on a basis a century or two behind the muggle in most respects, after all.

Given that it's Arthur Weasley you're talking about, of course, he might well have a muggle watch with an ilusion enchanted into it after it stopped working in the dense magic of his workplace, and probably home as well considering how often references are made to the Burrow looking like the only thing that could possibly support the odd addditions is magic. And when he hits the Indiglo button, the numbers pop right up out of the face, like the fellow had in that tellyfishin thing he was admiring in a muggle shop window one time. (I'm thinking specifically here of a 'Walker Texas Ranger in space' type show I saw some time ago, but can't put a name to, but it could have been a clip of the Princess Leia message from Star Wars or anything similar)

- CD

Re: ClassicDrogn has a rather poor memory

[camwyn]

Hokay. I wasn't really going to do very much with the timepiece angle- I just wanted a reference to make, something on the order of 'argh, I can't even find a *name of device here*, how long have they been in that room anyway?". At some point I might have Winston give Art his watch if it really becomes an issue, but only if absolutely necessary. It's an old school Mickey Mouse watch, all gears and windey bits, no electronics.

(Remind me to log out of my RP journal before posting comments. yeesh.)

Re: ClassicDrogn has a rather poor memory

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

Argh argh argh.

I need to stop torturing my brain by feeding it horrible Dan Brown novels. Old-school Mickey Mouse watches are, in my brain, now inescapably associated with Harvard symbologist and gigantic twerp Robert Langdon.

Re: ClassicDrogn has a rather poor memory

[camwyn]

... um, okay?

Re: ClassicDrogn has a rather poor memory

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

Just that it's rather a pity. I like Winston, and I have a lack of positive antipathy towards Arthur Weasley. Not fair to either of them. Or Mickey, for that matter.

*plots to insert Dan Brown into the Large Hadron Collider*

Re: ClassicDrogn has a rather poor memory

[camwyn]

No, let's go back to the part where I have no idea WTF you're talking about. Who is this Dan Brown person and who is the Harvard dude of which you speak?

Re: ClassicDrogn has a rather poor memory

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

Brown is the stain on humanity that wrote "The Da Vinci Code," and spurred persons with more than two neurons to their name into a froth of righteous indignation. His protagonist is a Learned Yet Sexy Professor at Harvard, named Robert Langdon, who at various points in his career toured CERN, destroyed much of the Vatican Library's archives, jumped out of a helicopter several thousand feet over Rome minus a parachute and didn't die, had sex with the last descendant of Christ (well, I think they did it, but he doesn't come right out and say so), and all manner of other ridiculous things. Despite his supposed brilliance, he's quite unable to twig the simplest of ciphers without the help of a large-breasted cryptographer.

Plus, Dan Brown used an albino as an assassin. Guy had albinism to the point where his eyes were totally pink and red--no melanin anywhere. First thing you learn about people with that degree of albinism is that they tend to have really, really shitty vision. Not something you really want in a guy who's supposed to shoot people from a long way away--and a six-foot-tall ghost-white monk isn't exactly inconspicuous.

Gah, I do go on. Sorry for eating up your comments page.

sorry for continuing the hijacking, but I just had to say:

[sundre.livejournal.com]

YES.

Read DaVinci earlier this year and hated it. Read Angels&Demons the other night, it was marginally better but not enough for me to care. Does any one know anything at all about Dan Brown as a person? Because Robert Langdon just screams Mary-Sue.

His excellence at water polo allows him to fake his own death. Despite his notoriousness in the first book, he is surprised that anyone knows who he is in the second. The bare handful of female characters are constructed out of silly putty, and he is convinced that they all want to jump him.

At one point he watches a woman get out of a plane. His thoughts run something like "gee, sensual lips, nice body, excellent breasts - oh right her father just died let's take another look: wow, she's crying."

Argh. Learned Yet Sexy usually does it for me - I've been known to describe the "rock'n'roll librarian" as an ideal. But, hell.

Re: sorry for continuing the hijacking, but I just had to say:

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

I combined Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons (were you as annoyed by the ambigrams as I was?) into one Very Short Version some time ago. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/vivian_shaw/74800.html)

Thanks camwyn, I'll wander off now.

[sundre.livejournal.com]

The ambigrams were evil and wrong. And that is brilliant work of yours. I'm adding you to my friends-list if you don't mind. Holler if you do.

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

There's always the Weasley's wallclock, which is prone to such times as "at work", "asleep", and "late again", and has one hand for each person. Iirc it also wishes Harry would tuck his shirt in.

[camwyn]

Yeah, but I was sort of hoping for a category of timepiece, like magic sundials or wall clocks in general or something. You know. "I haven't got a watch on" or whatever. Arthur's at the Ministry at the moment.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Hm. A pocket watch with hands similar to the Weasley's wall clock?

The wizarding world doesn't seem to be overly preoccupied with linear time... time... oh, hey!

*dives for the bookshelf* Prisoner of Azkaban. Dumbledore and Hermione have perfectly ordinary watches, reporting ordinary, Muggle time.

OTOH, a more wizardly-oriented timepiece would depend on the wearer -- one interested in astronomy and astrology might have one that didn't show time in hours, but in the way the current rising sign wobbled across the sky, with one sign being roughly two hours, that two hours being divided into a certain number of (as in, degrees/minutes/seconds of arc). I'm making the assumption that they're basing their stuff on Muggle astrology, though, which is probably wrong.

But, a wizard who specialised in runes (the Elder Futhark is canon!) might have a watch that split his day into 24 runic "hours," which of course snuggles up nicely against Muggle time -- or appears to at first glance. I'm perverse and regimented enough to want to want to start the runish day with Dagaz, which calibrated to sunrise and so wanders around a lot. It'd be perfectly useless for coordinating time with people at other latitudes, and of course you'd need a calendar of 24 runic half-months to go with it, giving us, "Well, officer, it was half past Raidho on the ninth of Isa..."

But the wizarding world in general seems to rely on Muggle timekeeping, see wizards' wristwatches (most would probably have pocket watches, but still, watches), calendars, etc.

-- Lorrie

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

Yay skating, that is something I cannot see myself doing at all. I can dance on my bicycle, but wheels on each foot are the reason my knees are all scarred up ... even after fifty years. Go you.

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

As for that timepiece, are you thinking along the lines of some sort of orrery? Worn on the wrist? Whoo ... where'd I see that ...

THAT'S THE WORD!

[(Anonymous)]

"Orrery," that's the one I was trying to remember. Thank you.

- ClassicDrogn

[murgatroyd314.livejournal.com]

The only two timepieces I can think of are Dumbledore's whatever-it-is and Harry's insufficiently waterproof watch that stopped functioning after the second task of the Triwizard Tournament.

Oh yes, and a wide variety of clocks in the Time Room of the Department of Mysteries.