Stroke of Midnight. Plus One.
I hadn’t meant to stay. Actually, I had meant to miss this by hours — Michael hinted that Hil B would be in appropriate garb at the one-minute-after-midnight Sudbury Paperstore long-awaited sale of the last in the Harry Potter series, so Tricia and I swung by about 7:30. Kinda forlorn actually, and after a nice chat with the completely normally dressed Miss B, we left. Not even a picture.
But as I crawled into bed about 11:00, I couldn’t live with the yawning void of incompleteness, and back I went. This time there was rather more life, and the Divine Miss B was in more appropriate regalia.
I hadn’t meant to stay. But the crowds built, the excitement mounted, and we spectator types, both empathetic voyeurs as well as wry connoisseurs of irony, lingered. And at the stroke of 12:01, a velvet drape was whisked off the waiting cases of tomes, and the first happy customer headed off for some long-awaited closure.
It was pretty calm. Some folks in costume, most not, the first customer but a putative adult in street clothes, and yet many a witch or specific character impersonator — even one Death Eater in a Scream mask — surged down the rapidly flowing line to claim their own reward. I shot a few images but was too shy to capture the most salient result — big smiles on young and not-so-young alike. The sense of disbelieving rejoicing was widespread. So I leave you with this image of two happy campers with their freshly-minted magic carpet ride, me sidling in on their dad capturing their moment before joining the flow outta there.
<p>About 16 hours after the stroke of midnight I expect, if Amazon has done their job, to get my HPotter #7 from my doorstep in Boulder, on our return from California. Yes, I’m a Rowling fan, too!</p>
Comment by Ed Schmahl — July 21, 2007 @ 1:09 am
Good work, Adam. You’re like my hired assassin except your shots leave people with smiles not prone. Good one of Hil. Was she surprised to see you return?
And, Ed, my mother, too, was a Rowling fan.
Comment by michael — July 21, 2007 @ 7:33 am
Last night when we were at the card store a person came up to Adam and asked him if he was playing the grown up Harry Potter…maybe!
Comment by tricia — July 21, 2007 @ 9:31 am
Hil was MOST surprised when we walked in the first time, perhaps not so much the second. Smiles both times, though. But I’d left her with A Very Sad Face (I imagine she felt her lack of costume was the cause for my lack of pictures … ), which situation needed rectifying.
We had another long chat, but she WAS on duty and dove back in as things heated up, and I chatted with the bookbuyer some, about the book he’s reading on torture through the ages (gruesome), all the tempting pages there are to read and the choices one must make, the profits for retailers from HP7 (none) and those for publishers (all but incalculable). Interesting stuff and a rewarding night.
Comment by adam — July 21, 2007 @ 10:02 am
Thank you very much, Adam!
Comment by Jennifer — July 22, 2007 @ 9:25 pm