Midnight Madness

There has been so much blogging about the Walk, that a very important event was almost missed in the blog fodder...Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince opened on July 15th!

Honoring a Newton (women) tradition of seeing the movie on opening day AND celebrating the fact that Holly can certainly stay up late without me having to worry about how she will do in school the next day, we bought our tickets online for the first midnight showing! Rachel and Karina got in on the action too, we were one fine quartet, ready to take in the sixth installment of Holly's wizard heartthrob.

In theory, the midnight show sounds cool. For the 17-20 year old set (the average age of the midnight showing attendees), it probably is cool. For the 40+ parent who worked a long day and didn't get home until 9:30pm...cool is not the word that I was thinking as we were standing in line on the backside of the theater at 10:30 at night, with an hour and a half to go before the movie even started, let alone stay awake for the 2 1/2 hour movie after the commercials and trailers. What was I thinking?

Fortunately for me, there was a McDonald's right across the street so I loaded up on a large iced coffee before we went into the theater. I had to be strategic...drink it early enough to deal with the multiple bathroom stops that will be needed but not so early that the caffeine leaves my system and I succumb to sleep in the midst of a very important plot point.

The timing was just about right and when combined with the excitement of the kids around me (I tried to blend in by wearing a mismatched collection of sweatpants, tshirt and sweatshirt, much to Holly's chagrin), I powered all the way through to the end of the most-enjoyable (albeit somewhat sad in parts) movie at 3:20 am.

I hope that the next two movies come out pretty soon, I am not sure how much longer I will be able to keep up with the midnight crowd!