Harry Potter 7.2!!!!

OK, so I may or may not spend all day on YouTube watching clips in preparation for the midnight opening of HP 7.2. That's right, the conclusion of the Harry Potter movie series.

I know I have a lot of very conservative friends who visit me here. If you're not into the whole Harry series, I respect that. Just don't hate on me for my excitement (please?).

Over the last few months, I've kept my eye on the trailers, and the "final" one .... is by far the best.


I'm pretty sure Erik will be glad this all ends tonight, because when I see one of these, I literally stand on my seat and emit an obscenely high pitched squeal. The dog's attention is rapt every time. ;)

Things I'm looking forward to in this movie:

1) Escape from Gringott's. I've seen a few previews and clips, and I think it's gonna stinkin' rock.
2) Battle between Bellatrix + Mrs. Weasley. It was one of my favorite parts of the book ... and I'm ready.
3) The conclusion with Snape. For anyone who hasn't read these, I won't spoil.

I have one tiny concern, however ... there's a clip in many of the previews where Harry and the Big V jump over a big cliff together ... I'm hoping that's part of a dream/nightmare sequence, because I might be disappointed if it's not. We'll see.

Erik and I were talking .... and I think starting at #5 I started attending midnight showings. I've been to 2 here in Salina and I'm ready for tonight's! :) Due to lack of time/mental energy, I probably won't be decking out in costume ... I'm usually in the land of Nod at the witching hour, so I'll likely go to bed early, then drag my bag of bones out of bed about 10:30 to go get in line.

See you on the other side! :)

Oh so close!

Three weeks.

THREE WEEKS.

Those of you who know what I'm talking about KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.

HARRY POTTER MOVIE 1, PART 1!!!!!!!

I've been eyeballing the trailers on YouTube, but today saw one of TV for the first time and squealed.

One of those ear-splitting squeals. Louder than Jonas Brothers and Justin Bieber fans COMBINED. Ok, let's be honest. If you wanted to throw in New Kids on the Block fans, too, I was probably STILL louder than all three of those fan bases screaming and squealing all at once.

No joke.



I'm not a late night person, but on Nov. 18/19, I'll be making an exception. I'll take an afternoon nap so I can be awake for the midnight showing. :)

I think I'm going to go with a client here in town who's also a BIG fan .... if anyone else wants to join us, hollar, because I'd love to have others geek out with me! :)

But for the time being, I think it's safe to start COUNTING DOWN THE DAYS!!!!

Census continued

Remember me geeking out about the Census here? Well, a few weeks ago, I was driving, listening to NPR and about screamed and drove off the road when I heard a story about Salina's efforts to get everyone to return their forms on the NATIONAL affiliate of NPR. Not a local story, but it was picked up by NATIONAL. Seriously cool (you can here the story HERE).

Well, because I'm a geeky-geek, I went to the Census Web site to see how Salina's doing. :) (There are 2 more days to mail them back, people, so DO IT!!!!).

Overall, Kansas is rocking out a 71% rate of return.

Saline County and the City of Salina is holding strong at 81%!!!!

Now, there's a list of the top 50 places with the highest returns. But they limit it to cities with more than a 50,000 population. Salina is SO CLOSE to that number. In fact, if we had a 50,000+ population in the last census, we'd be in the top 7-18 cities in the COUNTRY! How cool is THAT? :)


Here are a few maps of places I live/have lived to see the participation rates (coz I'm a geek like that!).


Good, but we can do better than that! ;)


Ah, Hays ....


Look at Salina! My neighborhood has an 84% return!

So, I know there are some sour pusses out there who want the government to buck off. If you are cranky about the current happenings, and I say "be glad we live in America and you can publically grumble about that!" But to people who say "spending is out of control and I won't participate" ... I say the following to you: "By NOT participating, and NOT returning your form, YOU DIRECTLY are costing the government MORE money. Quoting directly from the Census site now: ' If 100% of households mailed back their forms, taxpayers would save $1.5 BILLION dollars.' " ... SOOOOO, don't be a hater.

More information is available at 2010.census.gov. It looks like they want everything returned by April 17, so there's still time, people! :)

Geeking out, Census style!

I'm probably a big, fat geek, but I have to say, I was rather excited about this whole census thing. Probably because it is the first time I've been considered "head" of household (ok, co "head" of household) to fill one out? Who knows, but I was pretty jazzed.

And when it arrived this week, I ripped it open, elbowed Erik out of the way, and attacked it with a pen. (ok, I gotta be honest. Erik didn't want to fill it out, so there was no war over who would get to do it).

I gotta say, it was a bit anti-climactic. A few quick questions about if we owned or rented, what our racial origin was (Erik, you're not Samoan, so get over it), and our names/ages. It truly took all of 3 minutes, IF that.

The thing that amused me was how many spaces there were for people living in the household. Something like 12. Interesting. Actually, I have some clients with 6 kids, so I certainly won't argue it's unneeded.

Oh, and I feel like I should add a quick blurb about why it's important to participate. One of the biggest reasons is for YOUR city. The numbers from the census help to calculate tax dollars, as well as if your city is eligible for certain types of grants (Salina has a BIG push to get everyone to return their census in hopes of reaching 50,000 residents). As a former city-government reporter, I can see the value in this.

And, one last comment. Someone who is on the Census committee here in Salina told me that if you don't have a mail box, you don't get a census form. They live in a loft downtown, and while they have an address, they don't have a physical mail box. So they might not get a census form! Which led me to wonder about people like my sis ... who is a grownup now, but living in "student" housing. I wonder how many people have a similar situation. But I also suppose the smart people behind this already thought that one through and there's an answer I just don't know about.

Happy Thursday!