I’ve been re-reading the fifth Harry Potter book. About to start Chapter 36: The Only One He Ever Feared. Coolest illustration ever. :)

Political commentator and California gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington’s not doing very well in the polls, so I think drastic measures a called for. She needs to court the crucial Harry Potter delegation by changing her name to Arianna Hufflepuff. :)

“You’re kind of a cross between Potter and Weasley.”

–Mike Silva, one of my co-workers, speaking to me and referring, of course, to boy wizard Harry Potter and his red-haired best friend Ron Weasley

Fifteen days until the Two Towers DVD comes out… and with it, reportedly, a 10-minute preview of Return of the King!!!

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy… :)

Meanwhile, the Oscar talk for ROTK is already beginning. Well, yeah. Ever since the Fellowship of the Ring lost to A Beautiful Mind, I’ve been predicting that the Oscar committee would wait until the Return of the King and then give a best-picture Oscar to, in essence, the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy. And it will be richly deserved. Sorry, Seabiscuit, but this is Shadowfax’s year.

Becky and I had a $1 bet riding on this weekend’s box-office returns. I predicted Seabiscuit would be #1; she predicted #1 would go to Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Well, guess what? It turns out we were both wrong. Her movie beat mine by $0.3 million… for fourth place! Spy Kids was #1. But check out how close #2 through #5 all are to one another!

Perhaps unsuprisingly, my dad, in his first-ever blog posts (#1 and #2), has started doing something he does quite frequently in real life as well: quoting Irish song lyrics. (And we love him for it.) Inspired by this, I can’t resist quoting a few lines from one of my personal favorites, “Johnson’s Motor Car.”

This particular ditty of Irish resistance recalls an episode in which some Irish Catholic rebels (these days we’d call them “terrorists”) tricked a Protestant doctor, Dr. Johnson, into becoming the victim of a rather elaborate carjacking. The IRA boys sent a telegram to Dr. Johnson, telling him of a supposed medical emergency that required his attention. The road from Johnson’s office to the site of the “emergency” just happened to pass over a railway bridge where a bunch of the rebels were lying in wait. The good doctor fell for the bait, of course, leading to my favorite verse in the song, and indeed one of my favorite lines in the whole genre of Irish rebel songs:

But when he got to the Railway Bridge, the rebels he saw there.
Old Johnson knew the game was up, for at him they did stare.
He said, “I have a permit to travel near and far.”
“To hell with your English permit! We want your motor car!”

Hee hee.

Target in New Britain is all out of Order of the Phoenix. It sold five million copies on Saturday, more than twice as many as last year’s hardcover best-seller sold all year!

Well, I’m done! Less than 48 hours after starting it, I’m done with the fifth Harry Potter book. Woohoo!

So, when does the next one come out? :)

Correction to an earlier post: I’m in Pikesville, MD, not Silver Spring, MD.

In other news, I just finished Chapter 29 out of 38 in Harry Potter. That’s 675 pages (out of 870) in under 24 hours. But, I think I might go to bed now. I’m a bit sleepy.

We’re here! And, I just finished Chapter 18 (page 396).

We’re at a rest stop in Maryland now… and I’m on page 335. :)

Got my book!

We’re in line!

The first people are now getting their books! Here they are when they were first allowed to go up to the counter.

audblog audio post