HP7 Release Party!
Right after work tonight, we drove down to Albuquerque to attend a midnight release party at Barnes & Noble for the new (and presumably last) Harry Potter book. We're back at the hotel, now, and Strix is reading avidly. She reads considerably faster than I do, so I'll read it when she's done.
The "party" was really a few hundred people packed into a Barnes & Noble, probably breaking fire codes, dressed as their favorite witch, wizard, elf, muggle, painting, or howler. (Yes, one little girl was dressed as a howler - in a giant red envelope - and one young man had a picture frame around him so that he looked like one of the animated paintings in Hogwarts castle.) We got there a little after eight and stood in line to get a numbered wristband, and then at midnight they cracked open the boxes and started calling people up in groups of fifty by the number on their wristband to buy their copies. Our number was 310.
After several hours of being packed into what is really a very nice store, nerds in heavy costumes begin to smell a little ripe, so around eleven, this nerd started to spend most of his time trying to keep minimum distances from the other nerds. I worried that I would be the only one above the age of 20 there, but there were quite a few sad, middle-aged people there, such as myself, so I didn't feel too out of place.
A view of the store early on in the evening. It got a lot more packed than this.
One of the better costumes. The picture doesn't do it justice, but she looked just like Rita Skeeter from Goblet of Fire.
This little witch was obviously up past her bedtime. Either that, or she accidentally ingested her own sleeping potion.
Comments
i think my daughter went to that, it's a yearly outing. i would have preferred to watch, from afar.