Midnight Release

so , I just got home from my first Midnight book release. I got talked into going to the release of the new harry potter volume by one of my friends at work. It was being held at the barns and noble next to my house , so i figured sure, why not? Now i have ready the harry potter books and did enjoy them, however not so much that i couldn't wait a little longer to read the next one. Sometimes i'm not quite comprehending of why we like standing in line , a little after midnight, to buy a book we're not going to be awake to read until tomorrow anyway. (perhaps there in lies my incomprehension, perhaps people go right home and read the novel?) Anyhow, we got to the store and were greeted by wall to wall confetti and a loud, milling throng of people. Confusion
immediately set it. As we walked through the doors we were each given a map of the store in terms of the harry potter world. Booths had been set up in various locations throughout with give aways and activites. Not sure of where we were supposed to go first, we lingered near
the front entrance trying to look like we knew what was going on. Luckily, a friend of a friend recognized me, and , veteran that she is, lead us to the check in desk where you sign in for a #
if you hadn't already pre-ordered the book. Jen got # 261 on a little orange bracelet. My payment for coming to this event was that i get to borrow the book from her when she's done so i did not obtain a #.Now that we had established our place in the pecking line we went to see what fun could be had.
The event apparently had actually started several hours
earlier. Several aisles were filled with casualties of excitement and long hours. Children of various ages lay littered about napping, while tired parents paged through books of the
nearby shelves. Frantic employees dashed from the back of the store to the front with dollies loaded down with boxes of books, preparing for the opening sale. People mingled drinking coffee from the attached starbucks.
Many of the events had closed down for the night as we were approaching zero hour, but a few were up and running. Jen and I got "sorted" by the sorting hat into a house of the fictional school. Jen and I ended up in Ravenclaw and jens son , Brian, in hummbledor.( pretty sure that's not the right name but i can't remember it anymore). We took our little name tag stickers, and thus sorted , made our way to the next locale. That happened to be the free stuff booth. I am now the proud owner of a pair of thick rimmed , black, plastic glasses, a green rubber bracelet with the date of the release emblazoned on it, a small poster, a temporary tatto in the shape of a lightening bolt , and some stickers. We took brian to the tables where he could make a wand out of straws , and pipecleaners. Being two, he didn't quite know what to think of it.
Jen and I wandered aimlessly for another fifteen minutes or so. Brian was too wired up to hold still while we sat , so claiming a place in an aisle wasn't going to work. We decided to give in and go get some coffee from the 'bucks. Jen just had a 50, but business was swingin so the cashier didn't blink an eye about breaking it. We both ordered large coffee drinks, the guy making em jokingly asked if we could please grab the iron mesh and close off the shop from the book storeso he could take a breath. The cashier got in on it and advised us where the switch to the mesh was. We all laughed, but the employees only a litte. A few tables had opened up so we sat and sipped at mediocre brews. the rest of the evening was a blur. Ran into an ex-coworker, and chatted a
while. As soon as midnight hit a giant roar went up in the bookstore, but we stayed put knowing there were a thousand pre-order customers between us and our copies of the book. every couple of minutes one of uswould dart in to find out how close to time to get in line was. The employees were amazingly efficient, creating small assembly lines so that books were scanned and ready to go in bags as each customer approached the register. We ended up at the front of the line right around 12:40am. 1260 people processed in just 40 minutes. pretty good. 31.5 people per minute. Poor crew is probably still cleaning up though. they are opening at 7 am.
Me, i am ready for bed.

and i wrote that final sentence 45 minutes ago.... at which point i found out that apparently there is not paste function on this blog??? a copy but not a paste..... after much work i ended up setting up my email function, pasting my post into my email, then re-edited there because the layout ended up weird, then emailed the post to myself, re-edited again because again the layout ended up weird. What the hell?? copy but no paste????? alright i'm done.