Potter and lobster fest

[kumir_k9]

No spoilers within, so if you're worried, you can keep reading

The subject is pretty much my weekend.    I had started Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince last week and spent Friday night and some of Saturday finishing it off in preparation for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Chris went out Friday night and got 2 copies of book 7.  He stayed up and finished reading it.  Monique started the second copy while I was finishing book 6.  The first copy was ready for me before I finished book 6.   Chris stayed up straight through the night to finish it.

We stopped reading for a few hours Saturday night to go out with my senior developer from work.  For our anniversary, he took us out to the Stepney Fire Department annual Lobster Fest.  We spent time before hand at his place munching on veggies and chatting with him and his mom.  Then the four of us went to the fest where they all feasted on lobster.  I had steak because I hate the big, ugly bugs that live on crap.  We stopped for Dr. Mike's ice cream on the way back, stopped briefly to chat some more at Jeffrey's until the mosquitoes became too annoying.  All in all, a most pleasant evening.

Then back for a few more hours of Potter.  It was frustrating in a way for both Monique and I because we couldn't really talk about it during the reading.  She was 250 pages ahead of me all the way.

Sunday we got up and, you guessed it, continued reading.  She finished early in the afternoon and napped while I finished.  As promised, no spoilers, just brief impressions.  It was, imo, an excellent book.  I'd give it 4.75 starts out of 5.  As promised, it ties up all the loose ends.  We wracked our brains to come up with something it didn't and failed.  If anyone out there comes up with anything, let me know.

While the concept behind the last chapter (which I won't talk about for a while) was good, it felt like she had regressed to a much less mature writing style.  Very weird, though I had heard she'd written it before she actually wrote the series.

Other than that, I made a few stabs at getting my install of Access 2003 out of sandbox mode (WTF is sandbox mode?) so I could use the connection wizard to hook a database to some SQL tables.  I guess I will continue to try tonight.  Maybe I was just too distracted with the Harry Potter books to give it the proper concentration and research.

Comments

There is one thing...

[traceroo.livejournal.com]

Throughout the entire series of books, I don't believe there's ever a single mention of what happened to the rest of the Evans and Potter families. Sirius mentions that he was always welcome at the Potter's, so we know that James's parents were alive at least while they were at Hogwart's. We know that there weren't any cousins on either side -- but how and when did all the grandparents die? That's what I always wondered.

T.

Re: There is one thing...

[kumir-k9.livejournal.com]

Actually, we *do* know what happened to at least some of the Evans' family. We're intimately familiar with Petunia (Lily's sister) and Dudley (Lily's nephew). You could also count Vernon (Lily's brother-in-law). If she didn't tell us more, they were probably collateral damage.

Now that you mention it, when I reread the series at some point, I'll have to watch those mentions for other family on Petunia's side and see if any mention was made by people about the Potters. These don't really count as loose ends in my mind, since they weren't relevant to the story, but now I'm curious if they were there.

Re: There is one thing...

[traceroo.livejournal.com]

It's mentioned at several points that Petunia is Harry's only living relative (incorrect, since there's also Dudders, of course). There's never any other mention -- I always kind of figured Harry would ask, you know?

T.