A date with Harry

Last night at 12:01 a.m., my favorite book series came to a close with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We attended the book release party at Barnes and Noble Schaumburg, which had some neat stuff to do.

We got to make wands, snitches, and have our photo taken with some of the character look-alikes. Not to mention buy some Harry Potter merchandise... As you can see, I made a scarf in the weeks before this release, which turned out pretty Gryffindor-esque, if I do say so myself.


Here is a good one of us waiting in line - Andy's look pretty much says it all.


After we got our books and ran into the parking lot shrieking, everybody came back to our place for some late-night nachos and read Harry Potter for a bit. Andy was a bit ahead of us - he had read in the car at stop lights. Julie, however, showed remarkable restraint - she bought Book 7, but continued to read the previous books to gear up for the last one.

It's hard to believe that this is really the last book to be published, but I will have to stretch out the reading of this book as long as I can.

I am about a quarter of the way through thus far, having spent about three hours reading it last night and about another three this morning. It's pretty grim stuff, and quite a blood bath, as the papers have said. As Rowling hinted, quite a few characters are going to get the axe, and one of my favorite already has.

At any rate, can't go into it too much more without spoiling anything, so I will stop here and go read some more. (That is, once Dave has caught up to me in reading - we are sharing one book, obviously, so he got custody while I was out all afternoon running errands and teaching a crochet class.)


Harry, it has been a great ride, and I look forward to seeing the end of your journey.