It’s All Fun & Games Until Vegetable Oil Goes Sticky

…don’t ask

Last night, I took My Sweet Little Chocolate Frog Of Love to see Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince. We both enjoyed it, despite the fact that they had to compress and cut parts of the original story in order to avoid a 5 hour movie. They did capture most of the feel of the book and the alternating between ominous and funny worked pretty well. Not my favorite of the movies, but still quite worth seeing.

We saw several trailers before the movie. The best of all was the one for the new Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr as the Great Detective. Looks very interesting and action packed. I told Grace that it should be titled Sherlock Homes, Consulting Asskicker due to the fight scenes.

There was also a trailer for 2012, the new end of the world flick from the same guy who directed The Day After Tomorrow. It lost me when it began, talking about the Mayans as the “world’s first great civilization”. Yeah, cos the Chinese, the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians and about 100 others just didn’t do anything great. Also, I’m pretty much done with end of the world movies, especially those based on mystic shit.

Now, Uncle Doc must be hitting the road for several mystery shopping adventures. More blogging later.

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Doc Tempest And The Unkillable Beast

…from the June 1949 issue

NOT a Meme! Or maybe it is:)

Just to spread one last bit of Pottermania, I ask you all a question…

What would your Patronus take the form of?

Mine, I have no doubt, would be a coyote. Barring that, a fox.

Grace thinks her’s would be a horse, but I think it would be a dolphin.

Feel free to ask this question on your own blogs.

The Dreamtime Will Not Be Televised

…but they might do a theatrical version.

Thank you, Ms Rowling

Finished the last Potter book almost exactly 24 hours after I started it. A very fine and satisfying read and a proper close to the saga. A bit of drag in a couple of places, but not nearly enough to damage the story. Some big surprises, a few expected scenes, a damned healthy dose of action (and you’ll have no doubt which scenes will for sure make it to the movie), some sadness, some happiness and even some laugh out loud humor. I had about a 50/50 score in the dead pool, picking correctly some of who lives and who dies.

I got all teary a couple of times and lump in the throaty a couple more.

Like I said, a very fine book and I applaude Ms. Rowling for not just a finale, but an entire series well done.

The Kitty Cats Get Into Big Trouble

…and they had to escape in a catamaran

Doc’s Weekend Plan

1: Finish breakfast
2: Join Grace in taking The Girls to the dog park
3: On the way home, stop by PetCo for dog food and pig ears
4: Stop to buy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
5: Commence reading said potter book
6: Take breaks to eat & drink, water garden, use bathroom, walk dogs
7: Take break from reading for Sunday Game Day
8: Go to work on Monday.

I’ll be off line until the reading is done. See y’all here whenever.

Ugly As A Bucket Full Of Mud

…or worse

Just got back from seeing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. My capsule review: Ties with Prisoner of Azkaban as best of the series. Might even be better. Good acting all around, with Daniel Radcliff carrying most of the film. It’s pretty surprising how much of the thickass book made it onto the screen even after much of the fat had been trimmed. Well worth seeing.

Now, only about 15 months until we can go see Half Blood Prince.

The Night We Fell Through A Tree

…and were chased by an insane trucker and his pet werewolves

Stuff

1: My Harry Potter read-a-thon is progressing slower than I would like. This is mostly due to intrusions by Real Life.

3: The veggie garden is not growing with the insane vigor of previous years. This could be related to my choice to grow in containers, or it could be that I need to apply more fertilizer. Whatever the reason, it gives me greater resolve to build proper raised beds this fall for my veggie plot next year.

5: I’m thinkin’ that Grace and I will go see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on Friday night. From the clips I’ve seen, it looks to be one of the best Potter films yet.

7: GenCon is about 5 weeks away and I’m starting to get a bit anxious to go. It will be good to see my gaming friends in person again.

9: Eureka has it’s second season premiere tonight on Sci-Fi Channel and I’ll be watching it. It’s a fun and funny little show.

And now I’m off to work.

Peach Ice Cream And Exploding Geese

…from a TOON game

How Harry Potter Ruined My Saturday Afternoon

So, I’ve decided to re-read the whole Harry Potter series in preparation for the release of the final book two weeks from now. This meant that I needed to find the books, which I thought would be easy. HA! HA, I say! Finding things in this house is not unlike looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. What I thought would take minutes (in my deluded state of mind), took the better part of 5 hours and left me sweaty, tired and surly.

I started looking at about 11:00 AM, after a morning full of minor auto repairs (burned out brake light), grocery shopping and dog park visiting (which so tuckered my sweet hounds out that both of them are STILL snoozing). My first looking place was, logically enough, among the milk crates full of books in the Room of Doom. I looked thru 28 milk crates (some of them the big rectangular milk crates) full of paperbacks, hardbacks & magazines, but there was no sign of Harry.

I then looked thru the 24 milk crates full of gaming stuff (including 6 large crates containing only back issues of Alarums & Excursions) and there was, again, no trace of the boy wizard. Time to broaden my search.

16 assorted boxes full of miscellaneous stuff? Nope.

11 boxes full of strange and wonderful crap in the closet in the Dog Room (which in not really the Dog Room anymore, since they have laid claim to the living room and/or any other room Grace & I might be in)? Nada.

9 boxes in the closet in our bedroom? Zippo.

Both bookshelves and the 7 boxes of stuff in the living room? Dead end.

Kitchen? Nothing…but I did find a formerly lost paring knife.

Grace’s Computer Room? I had not the courage nor the physical strength left to tackle this, the most stuff filled room of Chez Cross. So…

…cursing mightly and sweating like a rat in a room full of terriers, I went back into the Room of Doom and began digging thru a couple of the larger boxes full of assorted stuff. By now, in my hungry and exhausted state, I was half convinced that we had never even bought the books and, indeed, the whole Harry Potter thing was some drug linked flashback from My Wild & Misspent Youth. And then, at the bottom of a box full of flyers I have collected at various game cons over the years, I found the 6 Harry Potter novels!

And it was 4:30 in the afternoon. My day, formerly scheduled for gardening, had been shot in the ass. Fortunately, I was too damned tired to care.

So, in a few minutes, I shall begin plowing thru the 3,341 pages that make up books 1-6. When the final book hits the streets, I’ll be fully Potterfied and ready to read it. And hey, my Room of Doom is a helluva lot more organized than it was this morning.