Deathly Hallows

I saw the last ever Harry Potter movie last night at midnight. If you don't like Harry Potter or are trying to avoid spoilers, you might wanna skip this whole post. Look! I have travel diary above!

Yes, I went in costume and carried a wand. While I was holding down the fort in the theater and my mom was buying me candy, I took a picture for the girls sitting behind me, and one of them asked if she could hold my wand during the picture. ^_^ (That was a very long, confused sentence.) And I got to sit next to Hagrid…who kept checking the time on his iPhone.

(Random sidenote: I also saw a preview for the second RDJ Sherlock Holmes movie. Benedict is my favorite Sherlock ever, but I still want to see it.)

Okay, back on track. I noticed a couple of things in the movie. One, Professor McGonagall enchants the Hogwarts statues to bring them to life. In the first book/movie, she casts a somewhat similar spell on the chess set protecting the Philosopher's Stone. Two, in the Room of Requirement, there are a bunch on Cornish pixies that fly out of a pile of junk. Could they possibly be the same pixies that Lockhart let loose in their second year? There was something else, but now I don't remember what it is.

The entire theater erupted into applause when Molly Weasley shouted at Bellatrix Lestrange. Also at just about everything Neville did. Can you say character development? Wow. (Emily, Claire, stop laughing.)

I swear, if there had been just five more seconds of Snape crying, I would have started bawling my eyes out…more than I already was. But I couldn't help thinking there was something I missed snickering at…it's on the tip of my brain…

Ah, there it is.

Okay, I think I'm done now.

Oh and weren't all the li'l kids adorable? And—

Ireland, pt 3: Butter

(Sorry to leave you hanging like that. It won't happen again, again.)

So, I woke up pretty early the next day. Before anyone else did, I mean. Waaaay before everyone else did. I snuck downstairs like a secret agent, using a trick I learned from Nancy Drew, and spent several long, antagonizing minutes trying to open a granola bar as quietly as possible. After The Parents woke up, I had toast and took a shower before going strawberry picking.

It should be noted that I have absolutely no memory of this. I'm just getting it from my carefully jotted down notes.

That day we took a car ride to Cork, and it apparently took long enough for me to initiate Emergency Boredom Buster Level 5: Hangman on my dad. I do remember that it took us a while to find a parking space for our giant epic van.

Let's just pretend it looked like that, all right?

And so we went to the mall. There was some really cool and very well done graffiti in the ladies' room, and I can assure you that I'm kicking myself for leaving my phone in Indianapolis and therefore not getting a picture. There was also a really cool escalator.

I got a cheese and onion sandwich for lunch—it's better than it sounds…kind of—and then I, my parents, and some other people set off for the butter museum!

Yes, there is really a butter museum in Cork.

Anyhoo, I spent most of my time there sitting in the back stairwell listening to a repeating radio short about butter. I thought it was awesome. That's just the sort of person I am.

After leaving the butter museum, we walked around Cork for an eternity. While we were in a bookstore we saw some guy get arrested in front of the camera store across the street, the same camera store where my mom's camera was getting fixed. …And that's all I remember from Cork. La-di-da!

Well, that and the fact that the parking garage must have been designed by B. S. Johnson. It took us ten or fifteen minutes to maneuver our large van out of that stupid parking space. But we did it! Specifically, Deb, the driver, did it. She must be some sort of goddess.

Okay, so my notes say we went to a museum. What museum? I can't remember what museum we went to! But, apparently, we went back to the cottages afterwards and stopped for a bite to eat on the way. And we stopped at one of those roadside castle once owned by Sir Raleigh. They're everywhere in Ireland. It's like a plague.

Hmm…a plague of castles. I like it.

Got home. Slept. The end.

Camp!

Somebody please put me out of my misery. It's Day 11 of Camp NaNoWriMo, and I have 10,000 words less than I should. Hey, ten thousand isn't that big a number, right?

Apparently it is, seeing as it's more than my whole word count so far.

I am going to fail so epically. Stupid characters not giving me any new inspiration. Stupid Felix being stupid.

But even if I do an epic fail, this comforts me. Even if I am going to fail, I can still inspire future writers. I—!

…I can go write productively now…

You'll have more tales from my trip to Ireland as soon as I get my word count up a bit. Now where did that random plot twist generator go…

Ireland, pt 2: Sleep Much Want

Sorry to leave you hanging like that, but I was really tired and stressed after being awake for 20 hours straight. Now I'm not as tired and stressing over only having about five thousand words done for Camp NaNoWriMo. Eep.

What's more fun than going through airport security? What's fun to pretend to crush while looking out an airplane window? What would I rather do than have jet lag?

The answer to all three is "anything and everything." It also pretty much sums up that whole thing that was happening that very annoying and stressful Tuesday.

Well, I left the plane minus one cell phone carrying pictures of the Epic Emily. (Which, I have recently found out, never actually made it on the plane. It's still in the States somewhere, and Friends are looking for it, after finding and losing it again. I love them.)

I waited and waited and waited at three different airports, a car rental place, and at the cottages for some reason I can't remember I was sleep deprived stop looking at me like that!

Anyway, cottages. Five of 'em. With a sheep/goat/cow pen adjacent. I just can't enjoy farm animals anymore, after having cleaned up after them for… Wait, was that only two years? Wow. Seemed like longer.

Not very much like that at all.

But that's a story for another day.

There's also the peacock, which makes this ungodly noise like my cat crying to be let into my room while I'm trying to write because I'm so behind on my word count *sob*, and a lot of other birds.

Pretty bird.

After pretty much passing out in my bed, I was dragged, feebly kicking and screaming, for a hike. Well, hike doesn't really do it justice. It was more wandering around with my parents and the lone other under-18-year-old of our giant group, trying to find a ruined castle.

Guess what. There wasn't a castle.

(Actually, my dad and I found the castle later, but that's another day. And it wasn't a castle, it was a church.)

So we walked back to the cottages and had soup and cheese and bread with the rest of our group. Then I kind of passed out in my bed again. The End.

Next time on Newfallen Mystery, Omnia climbs out the living room window and runs around the farm barefoot. 

No, Really, I'm Not Dead (Or: My Trip To Ireland: My Own Backyard)

So sorry for not updating you about my absolutely fantastic voyage across the sea. Okay, some parts were a bit less fantastic than others, like when I got lost at the park or being very very very bored at the Guinness Brewery, but some parts really were fantastic, like The Long Room at Trinity College and fresh cheese chips.

Which are French fries in the States, by the way. In case you didn't know. But now you do.

Be warned: This might be a very long post, especially if I decide to try to be funny.

Part one of my journey to the Emerald Isle actually took place in my own proverbial backyard.

Er, my old own proverbial backyard.

Unfortunately, there are no surviving pictures of this stage, so I'm just going to search up pictures on Google Images to illustrate the happenings.

After a four-hour drive and one strawnilla milkshake, I arrived on the doorstep of my awesome friend Emily, who I haven't seen in a while.

Actually, that looks a little bit like us. Just a little bit. Not at all, really.

We played Parcheesi with her brothers, made mini-pizzas, and hung out with our other friend Claire when she arrived. After Other Friend left, Emmers and I fell asleep on the sectional after watching Night at the Museum.

Lessee, what happened the day after that…

Oh, right. Wait, I forget. I remember we went shopping, but everything apart from that and the stuff between the pillow factory and the pirana breeding tank is kind of a blur. But I do remember that the next morning I had toast while watching TV, and then trundled off to the airport, where I spent a lot of time being bored out of my skull.

It wasn't quite that shiny.

We then flew to Newark with the rest of our group, and then spent several more hours sitting around. I ate a pretzel. Almost immediately after getting on the plane, I started messing with the screen and watched some movies. Dinner was better than roast beast compared to usual airplane food (that was a weird analogy…) and there were a lot of good movies. I watched Mythbusters, This Is Spinal Tap, and part of Cars before getting bored.

Before you ask, no, I did not get any sleep. I did listen to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, though.

That doll thing is staring at me…

Next time on Newfallen Mystery, Omnia monologs about sleep deprivation and explains what happened to her phone in the middle of laughing at peacocks. Claudia might put in an appearance.