Waiting for Harry

Hey everyone! Tomorrow is the day. Or for the true diehards, 13 hours from now is the hour. My HP book is set to be delivered by UPS to our house sometime tomorrow - hopefully in the morning. I've used all of my engineering skills to devise a plan to finish the book unspoiled. I understand it's about 750 pages and I read around a page a minute, so this means to finish the book this wkend, I'll need to read it for 6 hours and 15 minutes each day. This is all that's on my schedule, so it should not pose a problem. Until then I'm in media blackout mode. This means no internet, cable or NPR news. I've been at this for a week now, and it's somewhat refreshing. I'm also using it as an opportunity to blast Boomer (yep, still no name. we've about given up) with classical music while driving in my car. Better late than never, right? He seems to sleep when I drive, so I don't know if this is doing him much good though.

In other Boomer news, we are down to 2.5 wks and counting. I cannot believe I will actually have a baby then, but everyone assures me this is the case. It all still seems very theoretical even though I am all kinds of huge in the stomach department. If it weren't for Boomer's pummeling of my insides, I would be convinced that I'd just let myself go in a big way. Anyway, theoretical or not, I am very excited and we've almost got his nook ready. Ambyswing (our crib), changing table (my old dresser), hanging racks and shelves (my reconfigured 2nd closet) all somehow fit together perfectly in his little nest. My mom and I made blackout curtains a couple of wks ago for it and I have to admit I'm very pleased with the whole shebang. Hopefully he will be as well.

As for movies, I've seen 3 of note:

• Live Free, Die Hard - surprisingly awesome. Bruce Willis still rocks and the Mac guy was a great sidekick. The special effects were great, especially the ones at the end when some crazy jet that Thomas tells me actually exists chases and fires on Bruce as he drives an 18 wheeler. Unreal. The bad guy (Deadwood's Sheriff Bullock) was also great - funny and his motives actually made sense. All in all this did NOT let the franchise down. Way better than DH2 and even 3.
• Transformers -not surprisingly horrid. For some reason I had a fondness for this cartoon when I was young. It makes no sense as most of my fav cartoons around this time were more along the line of Smurfs. But there you have it. Even though the previews for Transformers looked beyond stupid, reviews weren't bad and a couple of friends said it was good. Plus it was really hot outside so what else are you gonna do if you're pregnant? The first hour wasn't too bad. The problem came with the last hour and forty minutes. Once the transformers started talking the movie started sucking in the hugest way possible. It was absolutely terrible. What can you expect from Michael Bay though. I fully deserved the suffering since I contributed my $5 to its bottom line.
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - good, but nowhere close to the book. This book was my favorite so far, so my expectations for the movie were pretty high. The movie did a good job representing the general plot of the book, but so many good parts were cut that I was inevitably disappointed. The ending fight scene was trimmed by a ridiculous amount and this was one of my fav parts of the book so I just can't get past it. On a good note tho, book 5 introduced one of my fav characters the spacy but sweet Luna Lovegood, and the movie did not cut her role at all. The actress perfectly captured her character and I especially enjoyed all the scenes she was in. One of my big complaints with Book 6 was the lack of Luna and Neville. Hopefully this will be remedied in book 7.

That's it! I'll post my thoughts on book 7 sometime next week after I've recovered.

Enjoy all you HP fans!

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: If you're not outraged, you voted for Bush. Twice.

-sunday