Oh Harry, We are Going to Miss You!

Here at Binkomonster headquarters, last weekend saw complete and utter devotion to all things Harry Potter. It was with some hesitation we marched towards Friday evening since, it was the last time we'd be lining up at midnight to get our collective greedy paws on another installment of Harry's adventures.  After a lovely dinner, and time spent watching the excitement build at Cover to Cover (children and parents in costume, scavenger hunts, quizzes...) the witching hour arrived. And at 12:03, we had our copy. A small stop at the Bagdad cafe (new habits die hard) to fill up on caffeine and some breakfast, and then it was time to be back on the way to the castle. The CTO stayed up until 5am. Then caught some z's, and was at it again around 9amish. 2pm saw a brief break for some food, and then back home to pickup the tale. 7pm and the first officer to complete the tome did the handover to the CEO. Who then promptly started and continued through Sunday, all the way until 6am Monday morning. (Darn book!) All we can say is, wow. Given all of the spoilers that were out on the interwebs (by the way, New York Times and whoever was posting the xeroxed pages on BitTorrent? a POX on you), we were happy that the ending was a surprise. More importantly, it was a great wrapup of an adventure that we've been on for the past 10 years. The difficult thing has been to get over the sadness that this adventure is, well, over. The Harry Potter books and movies have always been a special event for the Binkomonster clan. It means a late night date, and filling our heads with wonderful visuals and the best story ever. Some of the sadness has been tempered knowing that it isn't just us going through this. It was a quiet weekend all over SF (seems like everyone was holed up with copies of book Seven).  And we're just starting to get into the philosophical discussions in various arenas. But, still... no more wondering what Harry, Hermione and Ron are going to be up to next. Bwaaaah. And we've done the Philip Pullman books. And the Eragon series. So we need to go out on a quest and find our next literary obsession. But in the meantime, the woman who deserves the deepest thanks we can muster from the bottom of our hearts is J.K. Rowling.  How lucky are we that we got the chance to share in the literary skein she wove for us this past decade? Very.