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captainsblogQuite the day, spent far away from home despite not leaving it at all since about 10 hours ago.
We didn't do the Midnight Thing. We're too old for that, and Em's too young to have gone solo, so we checked the timetable at Beans & Noodles and found they reopened at 8 this morning. Perfect, I snickered. Eleanor's due at work at 9, and no way the kid's up that early. At a quarter of, I was pleasantly surprised to see they'd opened a bit early, and with no visible queue. Harry was home within the half hour....
....and promptly went into the waiting mitts of the teenager, in all likelihood never to be seen again.
I regrouped, and Plan B needed to wait until 10. That scheme required that I ensure I could donate an extra copy to the library as soon as we were all done with the extra, without it requiring two weeks of bureaucratic processing. No problem, I was assured; they could get it right onto the shelf. So back to B&N it was.
A bit more slowly this time, since the DOT decided everyone musta had the book by 10 a.m. and this would therefore be a GREAT time to cut the 290 down to a single lane heading toward the Boulevard. This did, however, give me plenty of time to contemplate the rear end of a casket truck. I've seen this one company's trucks fairly often on the open road- the Batesville Casket Company, which until recently festooned the back of its semis with the cheery message "PLEASE DRIVE SAFELY- HEAVEN CAN WAIT." For some reason, this message has been removed- dunno, maybe Warren Beatty sued- and in its place is this remonst-rosity:
Available only from licensed funeral professionals
Teh who?!? Is there some unregulated six-feet-underground marketing of coffins I was heretofore unaware of? Has Wal-Mart branched out into the aftercare business? (I'd expected this, some years ago, when our local grocery chain Wegmans experimented briefly with licensed day care centers connected to some of their stores; the other logical end of my cradle-to-grave dependence on them would have been to open affiliated funeral parlors under the brand name W-DED. )
Talk about a category-killer.
But anyway. Eventually the bottleneck cleared and I was back in a somewhat busier bookstore than I'd been in not quite three hours previous. Unlike the earlier hour, there were a few pointy-hatted preteen witches about, at least one of whom is now confused by my reference to her "turning me into a N.E.W.T." Hey, what good's a fandom if you can't cross them over?
By 11, I was ensconced and entranced. An hour later, the kid was already finished, having knocked off the 700-plus pages of the Scholastic edition in under four hours flat.
Took me longer, with occasional reality breaks, checking of things on the Internet (where from all appearances, tumbleweeds.com was the most popular site of the day) and re-reading portions of this and previous books to answer the numerous where'd THAT come from?!? questions that are inevitable in an epic of this size. But I am now done, and Eleanor has two pristine copies to poke at until I make the donation on Monday.
In time, I'm sure, I'll address the story itself, but yes, I wound up impressed.
We didn't do the Midnight Thing. We're too old for that, and Em's too young to have gone solo, so we checked the timetable at Beans & Noodles and found they reopened at 8 this morning. Perfect, I snickered. Eleanor's due at work at 9, and no way the kid's up that early. At a quarter of, I was pleasantly surprised to see they'd opened a bit early, and with no visible queue. Harry was home within the half hour....
....and promptly went into the waiting mitts of the teenager, in all likelihood never to be seen again.
I regrouped, and Plan B needed to wait until 10. That scheme required that I ensure I could donate an extra copy to the library as soon as we were all done with the extra, without it requiring two weeks of bureaucratic processing. No problem, I was assured; they could get it right onto the shelf. So back to B&N it was.
A bit more slowly this time, since the DOT decided everyone musta had the book by 10 a.m. and this would therefore be a GREAT time to cut the 290 down to a single lane heading toward the Boulevard. This did, however, give me plenty of time to contemplate the rear end of a casket truck. I've seen this one company's trucks fairly often on the open road- the Batesville Casket Company, which until recently festooned the back of its semis with the cheery message "PLEASE DRIVE SAFELY- HEAVEN CAN WAIT." For some reason, this message has been removed- dunno, maybe Warren Beatty sued- and in its place is this remonst-rosity:
Available only from licensed funeral professionals
Teh who?!? Is there some unregulated six-feet-underground marketing of coffins I was heretofore unaware of? Has Wal-Mart branched out into the aftercare business? (I'd expected this, some years ago, when our local grocery chain Wegmans experimented briefly with licensed day care centers connected to some of their stores; the other logical end of my cradle-to-grave dependence on them would have been to open affiliated funeral parlors under the brand name W-DED. )
Talk about a category-killer.
But anyway. Eventually the bottleneck cleared and I was back in a somewhat busier bookstore than I'd been in not quite three hours previous. Unlike the earlier hour, there were a few pointy-hatted preteen witches about, at least one of whom is now confused by my reference to her "turning me into a N.E.W.T." Hey, what good's a fandom if you can't cross them over?
By 11, I was ensconced and entranced. An hour later, the kid was already finished, having knocked off the 700-plus pages of the Scholastic edition in under four hours flat.
Took me longer, with occasional reality breaks, checking of things on the Internet (where from all appearances, tumbleweeds.com was the most popular site of the day) and re-reading portions of this and previous books to answer the numerous where'd THAT come from?!? questions that are inevitable in an epic of this size. But I am now done, and Eleanor has two pristine copies to poke at until I make the donation on Monday.
In time, I'm sure, I'll address the story itself, but yes, I wound up impressed.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 03:47 am (UTC)I....
... I didn't like it as much as the others.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-01 11:03 pm (UTC):D That made chortle.
I was pretty impressed ultimately, until I reached the epilogue. Bleh. But probably one of my favorite books in the series.