Matt convinced me to go to the midnight Harry Potter party at Barnes and Noble. I drove there, which ended up being a mistake. His car is a stick, and due to a lack of practice, I am quite inept at cruising slowly around a parking lot. Neither of us expected the entire lot for the shopping center to be full. We did manage to get lucky and find what must have been the last free parking spot near the other end (yay for small cars).

Anyway, upon entrance to the store, I received reserved braclet #378. This entitled me to ~45 minutes (after midnight) of watching everyone else who had shown up. There were fewer young children than I expected, though there were plenty of teenagers and adults to make up for it. Of course, about 1/5 of the people there were dressed up for the occassion in some manner: face paint; Hogwarts robes; et cetera. What really surprised me, though, were the number of punks and other individuals who would be labelled hard core. It never occured to me that people who exude toughness would want to be seen at a Harry Potter event.

In the end, we procured two copies of the sacred text. However, we made the mistake of putting them in the same bag. One employee, still reeling from being unable to order people around earlier in the night, was handing out posters and braclets. She refused to distribute more than one set per bag, even though we had both purchased a copy. Twit.

Now I must go look through the pictures of adoptable dogs at the LA Animal Services animal shelters, a daily ritual which causes nothing but problems.