Potterific

I have never attended a bookstore Potter release party before. I'm not very tolerant of crowds or long waits. But because my daughter is nearly as much into Harry Potter as I am, we went to Barnes and Noble last night for the final chance to participate in a release party. I'm glad we did. I'm already on chapter 6 and if I'd waited for this morning, soccer practice and other stuff would have meant I'd just be starting. :)

FYI, I'm on Internet blackout until I'm done. Since I do the audiobook and that's 27 hours, it will be a few days before I read blogs or news or possibly a number of e-mails. I'm terrified of someone saying, "Did you get to the part where..." and spoiling something.

Thank goodness for my friend Lainey. She called me at 4:07 yesterday to share her ridiculousness. She'd been shopping at B&N and saw that they were going to start handing out wristbands at 5:00 (which I knew but foolishly was going to go over at 4:45) so she got in line, even though she hadn't preordered. She said the line was already to the edge of the building. So I sped up there and joined her. Stood in line for an hour and a half. They gave out glow-in-the-dark Harry glasses, tattoos shaped like lightning-bolt 7s, and tassel charms in the Gryffindor colors.

Then Number One and went over at 7:30. We entered the trivia game, checked out the potion tasting (Maria Snyder was there, the author of Poison Study), and wandered around looking at the excellent costumes (Moody, Tonks, the portrait of the fat lady, and Moaning Myrtle were the best ones). Then we sat on the floor with numb butts for three hours. :)

B&N did a great job. We were in letter groups, and I had C. They lined everyone up half an hour early, did a big countdown, had everyone cheering and happy. When they started doing the sales they threw the empty boxes out into the crowd, which made people even MORE happy. We were outside by 12:11.

I listened to chapter one last night and am up to chapter 6 or 7 now. And I'm ridiculously happy that my downstairs bathroom needs cleaning so I can keep listening. I'm not very good at "doing nothing" and listening to audiobooks must be accompanied by productive activity. My house will likely be spotless by the end of the week.

It's all I can do not to comment, even generally, on the book so far, so I shall stop here. Please PLEASE, if you comment to this post, don't say anything spoilery! Even a tiny thing you think I probably already know! I don't want to spoil anyone else who might be busy or slow readers.

Everyone who's as passionate about this as I am--have fun!