i have a laptop!

[melannen]

I got a laptop for Christmas! And I get to start using it now so that I don't waste any of the ninety-day warranty!

(It's a used Toshiba Tecra 8100 almost exactly like the one of dreamsquirrel's I broke a few months ago. We'll see if this one lasts better. I told Mom that would more than fulfill my needs, and it does so far. At least hardware-wise. (It has a DVD drive! And infrared communications!) However, the OS seems to be a very *minimal* install of win98 for some reason - it wants the CD for all the windows network stuff, and Dvorak keyboard support, and Solitaire, to name the most important so far. And of course they didn't give me the CD, and if I put on a new OS I lose the warranty. Eh. It was pretty cheap as such things go.)

I told Mom she's getting an LJ account for Christmas whether she wants one or not, so she can read stellar_dust's work posts. What account name should I give her? She's being no help. I'm leaning toward crochety. (Because she really likes to crochet. Of course. :-p)

Let's see. We had snow yesterday and I went for a walk in the woods, recklessly attempted to cross the creek on a snow-covered log, and fell in up to my waist, and dragged home wearing about fifty pounds of icy wet wool and fleece. I think I'm coming down with the early stages of Victorian Novel Disease, alas.

One of the Potterfandom newsletters linked to this entry, about class and place in the Potterverse vs. in America, and what it means that Snape is from Spinner's End. Most of the discussion there is so far off the way I think about class that I'm not even going to try diving in, but one of the discussion threads played with trying to figure out where in America the Potterverse characters would be from, if the Pottervers characters were from America. And I couldn't resist making my own list. And I was amazed at how easy it was - clearly I'd been mentally slotting the characters into regional stereotypes for *years*. Anyone else want to make their own list so we can compare our preconceptions? (or just talk about mine...)

• Potter - An old coastal South Carolina family, which counts most of its wealth in prestige, although they adapted quick to REconstruction and have always been comfortable.
  
• Evans - Upper Midwest/Rust Belt, entrenched middle class. Probably from a suburb of Cleveland.
  
• Black - Former Deep South (Louisiana?) aristocracy that's been in a steady decline since the War of Northen Aggression. Narcissa's mum was a rich New Yorker & raised her daughters there.
  
• Malfoy - Texas oil barons who send their kids to school in New England to lose the accent.
  
• Weasley - Upstate New York; they've been yeoman farmers on the same land since the 1600's, and refuse to admit that they can't make a living on it anymore.
  
• Gaunt - Somewhere in the upper Miskatonic River Valley in Massachussetts.
  
• Granger - Chicago-area; an 'old family' - sons of the Pioneers. They go skiing in Aspen every Christmas.
  
• Tonks - Boston, working-class.
  
• Snape - the factory country of New England, former mill workers; the only ones who stayed after the mills closed were academics, professionals, and drunks.
  
• Pettigrew - Southern California, lower-middle-class.
  
• Lupin - Lupin's actually Canadian (BC), but tries to pass for American, 'cause he gets really tired of the Mountie jokes.
  
• McGonagall - Small-town Minnesota or Wisconsin, probably fairly poor
  
• Longbottom - Pennsylvania, old Philadelphia aristocrats
  
• Mad-Eye Moody - the depths of West Virginia
  
• Dumbledore - Learned a classic General American accent to hide the fact that he's actually from Little Rock, AK.
  
• Creevey - Jersey.
  
• Skeeter - Also Jersey.
  
• Quirrell - Oregon, small-town upper-middle-class
  
• Umbridge - Somewhere near Kansas, married up from trailer trash, got started in politics through the local school board when she was a stay-at-home mom, before her divorce.
  
• Chang - Old San Francisco family, middle-class since the '50's
  
• Patel - Northern Virginia, professional. Second-generation immigrants.
  
• Slughorn - Cambridge, Mass., since the Mayflower. At least, that's what they claim.
  
• Lockhart - Las Vegas by way of some dirt-patch Southwestern mining town.
  
• Bones - Old Virginia aristocracy. Probably related by marriage to both George Washington and Robert E. Lee.
  
• Hagrid - the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Dirt poor. Hagrid's dad got a scholarship to teacher's college.
  
• Crouch - DC, and before that, Annapolis. Hereditary Washington insiders.
  
• Diggory - Upstate New York, old family, professionals. Probably made their stake through the Erie Canal.
  
• Riddles - Old-fashioned New England robber barons, mostly in coal.

I seem to be associating Scotland with the Upper Midwest, which means that Hogwarts is somewhere in the wilds of the Minnesota Lake Country.

Comments

[aelkiss.livejournal.com]

Neat! I guess this means you don't need a wireless card for your desktop anymore. Does the new laptop have built-in wireless or are you still using the card I gave you with the old laptop?

Also, what is "vnd"?

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

Cheap shot on the Malfoys. Especially since they're not originally from Texas. They're *from* New England-- ever notice that only one has a discernible accent? (That would be the one who hated New England the way I hated Upstate NY.)

Weasleys from my part of the world? I can see that all too well. Yet another family with ten zillion sprogs it can ill afford. Except that they know who Voldemort is-- true rural New Yorkers wouldn't say "You Know Who", they'd just say "Who?"

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

Oh... and I kinda disagree on the Evanses being entrenched Middle Class. There's a lot of behavior I see in Petunia that reminds me of my mother, who is very much a child of the Great Depression. The social climbing, the obsessive house proudness, the giving ten thousand presents and spoiling Dudders rotten, it speaks to me of someone who has been poor, married out of it, and desperately fears ever going back.

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

The fact that "I" am a marginal presence in that conception goes a long way toward explaining why I don't think I *could* compose a Potter-in-America regional map!

(But, on that note, what is Californian about the Pettigrews? I think I might have them be from Colorado.)