Wandered into Wal-Mart on Sunday and was met by stacks and stacks of HP books. Went round the corner and saw more. Apparently, the rabid HP fans must all've gone to the Barnes and Snowball (as my family calls it).
Since I will not pay money for another HP book until I find one as good as Azkaban, I'm waiting to borrow it from The Boy's younger brother (he's still older than me), who is coming with the caravan in August. Younger Brother, the parents, and one of the aunts who isn't totally objectionable are coming down for three days. I have three days to read the whole book.
Since I managed to finish five Miss Marples, two kids books and a Jeeves and Wooster in five days, which is something like 1700 pages, I can probably manage 700 or so pages of HP in three days. I figured this is the only way I can read it before someone comes along and says "Voldemort kills Snape!" or something, without buying a copy. The library has had a monster waiting list for a while and they won't even get all their copies in until August 11th.
I'm most disappointed that I do not live in the land of the Kwik-E-Mart. The closest 7-11 is in St Louis, and it's not one of the ones being converted for The Simpsons movie (that one's in Chicago and I don't know that it's genuinely worth a six hour drive). However, I understand that pink sprinkled donuts and Squishees are being served at most 7-11s. The question is, would I drive two hours for a pink sprinkled donut that probably isn't all it's cracked up to be?
In other news, the drug dealers next door are gone. They drove us crazy when we first moved in because they listened to a police scanner up loud all the time. All the time. Then they chose to scream over it so they could hear each other. The police scanner was our first clue that they were maybe not on the up and up. The second was that, like our old neighbours in the apartment, there were never the same number of people living there. Sometimes there were two kids, sometimes just a baby, sometimes it seemed there were just a bunch of old men... Weird. But the fact that a fancy white Rolls Royce (guess I'm not entirely sure, I never got close enough to check, but the thing looked like a Phantom) pulled up outside once a month was sort of what made me think drug dealers.
Anyway, it's been quiet there for a couple of months, so we decided they must've moved out. Today, the house left. It's nice because now the view out our front door is more attractive, except that they left a lot of junk when they left. It's supposed to be a 20 charge if the maintenance guys have to clean the yard, but in this case, I'd double it, if I were them. It'll probably be next summer before they get around to putting in a new place, too, so we can feel like we have a big front yard for a while.
Every year, I've gone on a crusade to celebrate my half birthday. TB thinks this is wholly ridiculous and has always shot me down. Until this year. This year, he asked if we celebrated my half birthday if we could celebrate his too.
I've always wanted to celebrate my half birthday because my birthday is in February. That's close enough to Christmas that all you get for your birthday are the things you didn't get for Christmas. Kids who have summer and early fall birthdays have had all kinds of time to think up new things to get.
In spite of summer vacation, when August rolls round, it's been a long time since there was any holiday bestowing children with toys and candy. (That holiday, as we all know, is the Pirate Holiday which begins in mid October and stretches all the way to the middle of January.)
The Boy has finally realised that there are things that he wants, and it's a long time to Christmas and then his birthday is in March. To justify purchase, he recalled half birthdays. His would be in September, right about the time he gets his graduate money.
So, hey, August 12th is my half birthday, and this year, at long last, I get presents.