Monday, July 23, 2007

Harry Potter and more (no spoilers)


Death Eater
Originally uploaded by snarkmeister.
As I may have mentioned (once or twice or a million times), Rugrat and I had planned for the past six months to attend the Harry Potter book release party at our local B&N. Rugrat decided, the day before the party, that he wanted to dress up as a Death Eater. I think his costume turned out rather well, don't you? I also drew a "Dark Mark" on his left forearm with a dark green pen, and we got many compliments on it at the party. It was a MADHOUSE there...we waited in line for an hour and a half just to check in and get the armband. My armband was #96, which means I was the 96th person to check in who had reserved a copy of the book already; many people had not reserved a copy, and they got a different-colored armband.

At 11 pm, they started lining people up according to the numbers on their wristbands. There were different sections of the store for each group of 50 people. At midnight, they opened up ALL the registers and they moved people out FAST. They had the books pre-bagged; you just paid and they threw the receipt in the bag. We were way at the end of the second group of 50, but we were still out of the store within fifteen minutes. It was incredible.

We came home, I hurried Rugrat into bed, and then settled in to read for about an hour before I conked out. I ended up finishing the book around 1 AM on Saturday night, and I have to say, it was fantastic. This is how you finish off a seven-book series. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Stephen King (I'm still bitter about the ending of the Dark Tower series). HP7 was very satisfying. Of course, it also made me feel super-smart, because pretty much all of my predictions came true. ;-) Knowing (or thinking I knew) what was going to happen didn't stop me from sobbing like a little baby when I read those parts though.

OK, enough about Harry. Just a quick update about Mr Wonderful -- we have started discussing, seriously, the idea of his moving in. To the point that we are talking about what we need to get rid of (in order to fit the things he's bringing), and him transferring to the local Kaiser, and redoing the office/spare room for Tomboy. Of course none of this is happening right away, because the kids still need to spend more time together (which they won't get to really do much of until September), and Tomboy needs to spend more time with me, and get comfortable with the house and stuff. But this is happening, and it will likely be within the next few months. Mr Wonderful and I are very excited about it. I just can't wait to go to bed with him every night and wake up next to him every morning.

And because my life has taken this turn...I am sorry to announce that I am giving up the dream of opening the used book store. At this point, it just doesn't make sense for me, or for us. I can't afford to quit my job and strike out on what would likely be a very financially unstable business venture, especially as Mr Wonderful will soon be going back to school for a couple of years, and will probably only be working part time. And I can't keep collecting these books and storing them in boxes in my garage; quite frankly, we need the space. So I am going to make plans to get rid of the books I've got - whether via garage sale, donating to libraries/other causes, selling to used bookstores, or whatever...they've just got to go. I'm a little sad, but the fact that I haven't made any real moves towards starting the business (besides amassing HUGE numbers of books) tells me that it's obviously not the right time. And making a life together with Mr Wonderful and Tomboy is more important to me than holding on to a dream that may or may not ever happen.

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