I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

Some weeks ago, my mom sent me a cover article from Parade magazine about the new Harry Potter theme park about to open in Orlando. I've stopped getting even the Sunday paper, so I hadn't seen it. In fact, this was the first I had heard AT ALL about the park, which opened on June 18.

I called her back that night, and not 20 minutes after we got off the phone, she emailed me excitedly: there was a news special on the building of it, airing RIGHT NOW and she was taping it to send to me!

I mentioned this to jessruth the next day, and she said "I know, I watched that this morning! I wanna go!" And I said, ( "Well, why don't we?" )

I gave up halfway through rereading Book 5 and skipped ahead to Book 6, which I have a hope of finishing by tomorrow night.

Plans for Friday: Shul at 6:30pm, then meander down to the Harvard Square PotterFest for a couple hours, then backtrack to pandemonium_bks in order to pick up my prepaid copy at midnight.

Predictions for Book 7: ( NOT spoilers, purely my speculations; read now or wait until next week if you like )

Saturday night, tremontstshul is having a Hogwarts Havdalah Harry Potter Reading Party, 9pm-midnight. Come drink Butterbeer (two kinds: for grown-ups and for house-elves), finish reading in the Spoiler-Free space, and spill all your reactions in the Chamber of Secrets! BONUS: With your event RSVP (before sundown on Friday), email me your predictions about Book 7, and we'll give a prize to the person who submitted the most correct predictions!

I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last night. Would have been sooner, but I didn't get through rereading Order of the Phoenix until Sunday night.

Then I promptly jumped online and proceeded to read three days' worth of other people's comments, spoilers, analyses, and general nattering. :-)

So, rather than go back and comment everywhere that I read interesting things, I'm just going to write up a few of my thoughts and reactions here. ( Let the SPOILERS commence! DO NOT READ until you've read Books 1 through 6 in their entirety! )

Meme ganked from dragonfriek. Okay, some of this (bolded) is dead-on, some (italicized) questionable. But lots of these I basically already knew were Libra characteristics anyway. ( Libra Luuuv Profile )

Dresden Dolls at the Paradise tonight, 9pm. Although if I were smart, I would stay home, do some memorizing (of lines and lines), and get some rest. But when have I ever been smart that way? I don't especially have the money either, but, y'know.

The editorial staff of the excellent Harry Potter Lexicon are on LJ as hp_lexicon and hp_lexicon_jr. Hee. They seem to have posted for a while about Lexicon site updates, but given up of late. Still.
Also on LJ is harrypotters, for fans of Harry and the Potters, sort of a "tribute band" -- who, as it happens, are Boston-based and will be playing at the Middle East on August 3. Silliness abounds. I wasn't really impressed with the band's sound, but the concept is cute.

In other meta-Potter topics, I got this book the other day. People who wanna borrow it after I'm done are welcome to. Its style is a bit annoying, but on the whole it's interesting and at least insightful. It does seem to present fairly well-researched close reading. And she's actually pointed out a couple of things I managed to miss so far. I picked up the book because I'd already been formulating some thoughts on what *I* think are the meaningful mystery elements; I plan to natter on about those myself at some point. Maybe in August.

Off now to deliver buttons to scholargipsy. :-)
Shabbat shalom, y'all.

jessruth visited this weekend! Yay!
But it poured all weekend. Boo!
But Harry Potter 5 came out. Yay!
But it was also Baitcon so a lot of people were out of town. Boo!
But we got taken out to nice dinners -- first Ethiopian and then Korean. Yay!
And we had a highly successful shopping run to Target. Yay!
And played two games of Scrabble, the usual neck-and-neck, winning one each. Yay!
And Jess got to stay an extra night because she's now on vacation. Yay!
But I came down with a cold Sunday afternoon and was mostly useless as company thereafter. Boo!
And in fact I stayed home from work yesterday too, nursing my cough and congestion. Boo!
But since I was languishing on the couch all day anyway, I managed to finish Harry Potter. Yay!
But the nice weather waited until I was stuck inside all day. Boo!
But I'm leaving for California this Friday to visit my mom &c. Yay!
But that means scheduling this week is extra tight. Boo!
And I'm missing a party this weekend that I really wanted to go to. Boo!
But for now, I'm back in the office, and my work is pretty much cut out for me the rest of this short week. Yay!
Addenda:
But I'm still pretty much dragging today. Boo!
But I did go out to the mall at lunchtime and buy a cute new bathing suit. Yay!