This year I didn't get to go to the whole local shindig the entire time (I had a retirement party to go to for the first few hours), but I managed to get downtown around 8 p.m. to check out the festivities at both stores.

Avid Reader was having street races, face painting, etc. going on outside the store. I ran into someone I know from NaNoWriMo and chatted with her for a bit, since neither of us was inclined to race with kiddies. We looked at the Slutty Witch costumes (ironic that I saw more of those at the more kid-themed party), and went through our goody bags that came with purchasing a book. They came with glow sticks, glitter crayons, and Time-Turner necklaces, which were quite nifty.

Around the same time, both her friends and my friends showed up, so we split up. My friends headed over to the restaurant near to Borders for dinner, and after that we decided to check out the Borders party (by this point, the Avid party had turned into watching HP4, the movie). There were some pretty nifty costumes over there, including Hagrid, Mad-Eye (unphotographed, sadly), Hedwig, Mrs. Black, and my favorite, the Monster Book of Monsters:

There was also a guy who'd strapped a broom onto his unicycle and rode it around and around. He was kind of hard to catch in a photo, though!

After braving the crowds in Borders and getting some ice cream, we ended up sitting around. One fellow played fire poi with his glow sticks. At one point we all tried drawing tarot cards to see what Hogwarts house we should all be in. I came out in Gryffindor. (This is kind of baffling to me that I come out in Gryffindor on most online tests, when to me I sure as hell sound like a natural Ravenclaw...)

Around 11:45, here was the line at Borders:

And this is the line at Avid at 12:01 when the lights came on:

The nice thing about Avid: you get your book by 12:15 even if you're #200 (which one of my friends was!). This year, nobody yelled out any "who dies" spoilers, so yay for that. I spotted two girls reading by the light of glowsticks right then and there.

Alas, this year I did not pull an all-nighter to read the book, as I had stupidly signed up for a CC make-up shift on Saturday morning. Book was still good, though I am still feeling kind of overwhelmed after reading it.

I can't believe it's the end, you know? No more Potter parties and 12:01 releases for books and people being so excited over one series. *sniffle* I loved how this series managed to get the interest of so many people, especially ones who don't like reading and/or don't like reading thick books. How cool is that, really?

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