HARRY POTTER
Okay, so Friday. Friday, Jess arranged to leave work at noon, and she got there at about 1pm, and was number 5 in line. The plan was to leave work at 4pm to go get in line with her.
At 3:57 (I checked), my boss hands me a couple pages of items and asks me to make a minor change to all of them. I whimper slightly, because I seriously had juuust put on my shoes to leave, but I buckle down because I know we're swamped and they need me. I get into a groove (item#, Enter three times, \31, crtl-alt-insert, F2, repeat ad infinitum) and get the whole thing done in 15 minutes, to the shock of everyone. I hand off the list to my boss, ask if I can go to Harry Potter, and she sends me off with her blessing. WOOT!
I speed down the road to B&N, which was picked because it's just down the road from work and therefore faster to get to, and meet Jess. There are already about 100 people in line, and it's only 4:30ish. Jess had already told everyone around her that I was coming, so they were cool with it when I sat down with her... and then the line curved around behind shelves so the people back there couldn't see. Heh. The line stretched back about 5 rows, I think. I settled down with Animal Crossing, and got a monkey in my town (YAY!) and caught some fishes and bugs I'd not caught yet (YAY!) and had my supermagical headphones in and oh man that game sounds cool through supermagical headphones and oh man I'm a dork. While we were sitting there, they wheeled out the boxes of books from the back to the area behind the cash registers. On big carts, covered in tarps, because it was SUPAR SEKRIT what they were bringing out. Clearly, we had no idea what was under those tarps, even though the tarps were too short and we could see the big HARRY POTTER labels all over the boxes.
Then at 5:30 they started handing out armbands and tickets. Jess and I got these tickets:
Yellow was the first color, A was the first group, and we got numbers 5 and 6. Jess' is number 5, and she reserved 5 books, because she was holding a place in line for 4 other people, too.
After that, we wandered around trying to find a place to sit. I considered walking over to Jason's Deli for foods, but eventually decided to get a sammich from the cafe instead. It was a sammich made of pure delicious. Then we camped out in the kids' section, right next to this book:
Guys, I'm not gonna post any spoilers, but this book is pretty awesome.
Then the kids' section started filling up, because everyone wanted their pictures taken with the cardboard cutout of Harry from the cover of the book. So we vacated and wandered around, looking for another place to sit. As we did, I "snuck" (the lady I asked pretended not to know what I was doing) this picture:
We ended up in the Bible section, thinking that surely no one would be buying Bibles (I said this aloud, seriously). I laid out on the floor and started playing Puzzle Quest, and Jess laid out and started reading. Between the two of us, we blocked pretty much all of the Bibles. And then this lady and her daughter were led to the Bible section by an employee: she was Bible-shopping for her daughter, who was going away to camp soon and needed a smallish one to take with her. Jess and I managed not to laugh until the lady left, but it was pretty tough. Who knew someone would be Bible-shopping on a Friday night, let alone on Harry Potter night?
Then we retreated to the cafe again, for beverages and also because Jess wanted a sammich. All the tables were taken, so we went back to the book floor to find a place to sit. Our Bible spot was taken, so we sat instead on the aisle with the books in Spanish and the New Age books (Sylvia brown had a couple rows taken up all by herself! Geeeeeeeez!), and this ended up being a much better spot to avoid shoppers. Eventually, two of Jess' swimmers showed up, and we sat there until 11. That's when the fire marshal showed up, apparently!
You see, it was like this: There were four colors of flyers, three (yellow, green, and pink) for those who had reserved, one (orange) for those who hadn't. In each color, there were 26 letters, and there were 26 of each letter. So the first 26 people got a Yellow A, then a Yellow B to the next 26, and so on. They got through all the yellows and handed out lots of greens (I think I saw a Green 'P', that I remember) and oranges. There were probably about 1000 people there, probably more. It was a pretty crowded store. Maximum capacity for the store was, I think they said, 800.
So the fire marshal showed up and, after much confusion, kicked everyone out. At first they were trying to kick out everyone who had a ticket that was orange, seeing as they'd be last in line to get their books anyways. But then they realized that getting people to cooperate would be tricky. So they tried to say "orange tickets and anyone with a L-Z ticket". Oh, the confusion. Then they gave up and just said "EVERYONE OUT". So we all filed through the doors. Slowly. I guess there is a reason they limit capacity. Had there been a fire or something, we definitely would have all burned up in the traffic jam.
Jess and I ran to our cars to unload stuff. I left pretty much everything in my car except my ipod, headphones, camera, phone and wallet. Oh, my bag was so much lighter without my DS and Jess' uneaten box of poptarts. Then we elbowed our way back towards the frontish area, holding up our Yellow A tickets to clear the way. The People In Charge were trying very hard to keep people out of the drive way, an on the sidewalk, but with 1000+ people, that's just not gonna work, especially when everyone wants to know what's going on and the only louspeaker is a tiny one by the door. That's about when I made my phone post and took this crappy picture.
At first they were trying to get people in line by letter. That didn't work at all. Then they stared saying they were gonna let people into the store four at a time to buy the books. People got pretty angry about that. It was especially stupid because there were 6 registers, and more in the back. Eventually they figured out that letting in all 52 of the Yellow and Green A people wouldn't put them over capacity, and let us in.
(I guess last time, people were really mad that books were sold in the order that people showed up in line to get their tickets. I don't know why, as that seems perfectly fair to me, but whatever. So this time around, they changed it. They gave out the tickets Yellow A-Z, then Green A-Z, and so on. But when they SOLD the books, they called in Yellow A and Green A first, then Yellow and Green B, and so on. That seems pretty unfair to the Yellow B people, who still got there hours in advance but had to wait for the people who got there after them. And those poor Yellow Z people. If they had only been a little bit later, they would have been in the first round. But that doesn't really matter, I guess, as I was in Yellow !, the first of the firstiest)
So we went inside, and were all lined up, and they let the first 6 people go stand in front of the register. This group of six included a lady with an orange D ticket... meaning that not only had she not reserved her book, but also she wasn't even in line very early. Hooker.
Then we counted down to midnight. And then we got our books! While Jess was with her four other people and getting them their books, I put my headphones in my ears and my book in my bag and pulled out my keys. You see, after this guy last time, I was really paranoid about someone pulling a stunt like that.
But no one did, and I SPED home and Jess followed and we settled in and squeeeeeeeeeed a started reading. It was really hard for me not to make excited noises or sad noises when something happened, because I pretty much started out ahead of Jess (I am a super-speedy reader) and I didn't want to torment her. We read until 2:30, when I had to go to bed because I had work Saturday morning.
Did I mention that I had to work Saturday? I had to work Saturday. I'd been planning on having the day off so I could stay up allllll night reading, planning it since the last book, but because our owner spent last week playing golf, my plans were shot. Golf. He was golfing, while we were waiting for him to give us numbers to do a buy. We were supposed to have the buy done by Wednesday at the latest. But instead we sat there while he hemmed and hawed and changed his mind and made one lady do and redo and redo again these ridiculously complicated formula (each time she had to redo them, it was at least a day's work, and it was really stressful for her because she was barely understanding it and had to translate it into a format that our system would understand) and then "oh, I forgot, you need to do this, too" and they finally got everything set to do the buy Friday night and then he said "okay, so do the buy tomorrow, the vendors have to have it by Monday." Dude, if it is THAT FRIGGIN URGENT, maybe you should get off the dang golf course and give us our numbers. Jerk. On the plus side, I'm planning on going to Austin next Saturday for the JE show, and he lives down there, so maybe I can convince my boss to give me our owner's address so I can visit him with a baseball bat. Not that it really made me mad or anything.
So I finally got home from work, and read and slept, and Jess and I were pretty sleep-deprived. Last night we started getting to that point of tiredness where everything was hilarious, and that's when I posted this from my cell phone. She got a text message from Jeffrey, asking her a question, and I said "Well, tell him you're not gonna answer, and he's gonna have to, um, not know!" I had been hoping some awesomely awesome thing would pop into my head for her to tell him he'd have to do, but it didn't. For some reason, though, we found this absolutely hilarious beyond human comprehension. At one point I was laughing so hard I couldn't inhale. For serious.
I finished it today at 2:30. Jess is still on my couch, reading. And that's my weekend!
At 3:57 (I checked), my boss hands me a couple pages of items and asks me to make a minor change to all of them. I whimper slightly, because I seriously had juuust put on my shoes to leave, but I buckle down because I know we're swamped and they need me. I get into a groove (item#, Enter three times, \31, crtl-alt-insert, F2, repeat ad infinitum) and get the whole thing done in 15 minutes, to the shock of everyone. I hand off the list to my boss, ask if I can go to Harry Potter, and she sends me off with her blessing. WOOT!
I speed down the road to B&N, which was picked because it's just down the road from work and therefore faster to get to, and meet Jess. There are already about 100 people in line, and it's only 4:30ish. Jess had already told everyone around her that I was coming, so they were cool with it when I sat down with her... and then the line curved around behind shelves so the people back there couldn't see. Heh. The line stretched back about 5 rows, I think. I settled down with Animal Crossing, and got a monkey in my town (YAY!) and caught some fishes and bugs I'd not caught yet (YAY!) and had my supermagical headphones in and oh man that game sounds cool through supermagical headphones and oh man I'm a dork. While we were sitting there, they wheeled out the boxes of books from the back to the area behind the cash registers. On big carts, covered in tarps, because it was SUPAR SEKRIT what they were bringing out. Clearly, we had no idea what was under those tarps, even though the tarps were too short and we could see the big HARRY POTTER labels all over the boxes.
Then at 5:30 they started handing out armbands and tickets. Jess and I got these tickets:
Yellow was the first color, A was the first group, and we got numbers 5 and 6. Jess' is number 5, and she reserved 5 books, because she was holding a place in line for 4 other people, too.
After that, we wandered around trying to find a place to sit. I considered walking over to Jason's Deli for foods, but eventually decided to get a sammich from the cafe instead. It was a sammich made of pure delicious. Then we camped out in the kids' section, right next to this book:
Guys, I'm not gonna post any spoilers, but this book is pretty awesome.
Then the kids' section started filling up, because everyone wanted their pictures taken with the cardboard cutout of Harry from the cover of the book. So we vacated and wandered around, looking for another place to sit. As we did, I "snuck" (the lady I asked pretended not to know what I was doing) this picture:
We ended up in the Bible section, thinking that surely no one would be buying Bibles (I said this aloud, seriously). I laid out on the floor and started playing Puzzle Quest, and Jess laid out and started reading. Between the two of us, we blocked pretty much all of the Bibles. And then this lady and her daughter were led to the Bible section by an employee: she was Bible-shopping for her daughter, who was going away to camp soon and needed a smallish one to take with her. Jess and I managed not to laugh until the lady left, but it was pretty tough. Who knew someone would be Bible-shopping on a Friday night, let alone on Harry Potter night?
Then we retreated to the cafe again, for beverages and also because Jess wanted a sammich. All the tables were taken, so we went back to the book floor to find a place to sit. Our Bible spot was taken, so we sat instead on the aisle with the books in Spanish and the New Age books (Sylvia brown had a couple rows taken up all by herself! Geeeeeeeez!), and this ended up being a much better spot to avoid shoppers. Eventually, two of Jess' swimmers showed up, and we sat there until 11. That's when the fire marshal showed up, apparently!
You see, it was like this: There were four colors of flyers, three (yellow, green, and pink) for those who had reserved, one (orange) for those who hadn't. In each color, there were 26 letters, and there were 26 of each letter. So the first 26 people got a Yellow A, then a Yellow B to the next 26, and so on. They got through all the yellows and handed out lots of greens (I think I saw a Green 'P', that I remember) and oranges. There were probably about 1000 people there, probably more. It was a pretty crowded store. Maximum capacity for the store was, I think they said, 800.
So the fire marshal showed up and, after much confusion, kicked everyone out. At first they were trying to kick out everyone who had a ticket that was orange, seeing as they'd be last in line to get their books anyways. But then they realized that getting people to cooperate would be tricky. So they tried to say "orange tickets and anyone with a L-Z ticket". Oh, the confusion. Then they gave up and just said "EVERYONE OUT". So we all filed through the doors. Slowly. I guess there is a reason they limit capacity. Had there been a fire or something, we definitely would have all burned up in the traffic jam.
Jess and I ran to our cars to unload stuff. I left pretty much everything in my car except my ipod, headphones, camera, phone and wallet. Oh, my bag was so much lighter without my DS and Jess' uneaten box of poptarts. Then we elbowed our way back towards the frontish area, holding up our Yellow A tickets to clear the way. The People In Charge were trying very hard to keep people out of the drive way, an on the sidewalk, but with 1000+ people, that's just not gonna work, especially when everyone wants to know what's going on and the only louspeaker is a tiny one by the door. That's about when I made my phone post and took this crappy picture.
At first they were trying to get people in line by letter. That didn't work at all. Then they stared saying they were gonna let people into the store four at a time to buy the books. People got pretty angry about that. It was especially stupid because there were 6 registers, and more in the back. Eventually they figured out that letting in all 52 of the Yellow and Green A people wouldn't put them over capacity, and let us in.
(I guess last time, people were really mad that books were sold in the order that people showed up in line to get their tickets. I don't know why, as that seems perfectly fair to me, but whatever. So this time around, they changed it. They gave out the tickets Yellow A-Z, then Green A-Z, and so on. But when they SOLD the books, they called in Yellow A and Green A first, then Yellow and Green B, and so on. That seems pretty unfair to the Yellow B people, who still got there hours in advance but had to wait for the people who got there after them. And those poor Yellow Z people. If they had only been a little bit later, they would have been in the first round. But that doesn't really matter, I guess, as I was in Yellow !, the first of the firstiest)
So we went inside, and were all lined up, and they let the first 6 people go stand in front of the register. This group of six included a lady with an orange D ticket... meaning that not only had she not reserved her book, but also she wasn't even in line very early. Hooker.
Then we counted down to midnight. And then we got our books! While Jess was with her four other people and getting them their books, I put my headphones in my ears and my book in my bag and pulled out my keys. You see, after this guy last time, I was really paranoid about someone pulling a stunt like that.
But no one did, and I SPED home and Jess followed and we settled in and squeeeeeeeeeed a started reading. It was really hard for me not to make excited noises or sad noises when something happened, because I pretty much started out ahead of Jess (I am a super-speedy reader) and I didn't want to torment her. We read until 2:30, when I had to go to bed because I had work Saturday morning.
Did I mention that I had to work Saturday? I had to work Saturday. I'd been planning on having the day off so I could stay up allllll night reading, planning it since the last book, but because our owner spent last week playing golf, my plans were shot. Golf. He was golfing, while we were waiting for him to give us numbers to do a buy. We were supposed to have the buy done by Wednesday at the latest. But instead we sat there while he hemmed and hawed and changed his mind and made one lady do and redo and redo again these ridiculously complicated formula (each time she had to redo them, it was at least a day's work, and it was really stressful for her because she was barely understanding it and had to translate it into a format that our system would understand) and then "oh, I forgot, you need to do this, too" and they finally got everything set to do the buy Friday night and then he said "okay, so do the buy tomorrow, the vendors have to have it by Monday." Dude, if it is THAT FRIGGIN URGENT, maybe you should get off the dang golf course and give us our numbers. Jerk. On the plus side, I'm planning on going to Austin next Saturday for the JE show, and he lives down there, so maybe I can convince my boss to give me our owner's address so I can visit him with a baseball bat. Not that it really made me mad or anything.
So I finally got home from work, and read and slept, and Jess and I were pretty sleep-deprived. Last night we started getting to that point of tiredness where everything was hilarious, and that's when I posted this from my cell phone. She got a text message from Jeffrey, asking her a question, and I said "Well, tell him you're not gonna answer, and he's gonna have to, um, not know!" I had been hoping some awesomely awesome thing would pop into my head for her to tell him he'd have to do, but it didn't. For some reason, though, we found this absolutely hilarious beyond human comprehension. At one point I was laughing so hard I couldn't inhale. For serious.
I finished it today at 2:30. Jess is still on my couch, reading. And that's my weekend!