Harry Potter Madness

As a devoted Potter-crazed maniac, Angela and I of course attended the midnight purchasing party for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." As usual, it was a complete circus--full of the usual weirdos, comings, goings, and generally idiotic people who want to butt in front of you--but hey! It's still fun to hang out with the crazies every now and again.

Our odyssey began early Friday morning as we ventured out at an unholy hour to wait in line for wristbands at our local Barnes and Noble. Like a rock concert, these wrist bands essentially get you in line to buy the book first. After waiting in line for what seemed like forever, we got our wristbands as part of "Group B." That meant, that we were between 101 and 200 in line. That ended up making the second leg of our odyssey, much easier.

Here's our view from the middle of the line which, believe it or not, was moving fairly fast. There were balloons, wrappers, papers and evidences of games long since been played, but the hush inside the store was pretty surprising. Amazingly, everyone was fairly subdued once in the store and on the way up to the cash register--as if taking a walk with a friend for the last time.

Wow! Look at all those books! We'd finally reached the counter where we could purchase our books and boy were there a ton of them (as you can see.) Our purchase was made swiftly and we were out the door only 20 minutes after getting in line. The waiting in line earlier that day certainly helped.

Of course we ran directly home and...fell asleep. But most of the next day and into Sunday was spent reading. I finished the book early, early Monday morning, but I really enjoyed it. I'll post a more final reaction later.