The housecleaning included getting out my laundry, which I'd set to wash and dry some time before. The epic disco ball dress that I'd worn for Halloween -- I'd looked at it, and I figured it was a bit manky. The label said to handwash, and never dryclean. I had a few other things that needed handwashing, and my launderizer had a handwash setting! What could be better?
O, the embarrassment.
So I opened the launderizer, and was greeted with a shower of slightly gummy flat silver sequins that had formerly been attached to my dress. I pulled everything out, with more sequins. I realized that all of the things that had been washed with the dress had sequins on them. I dug gobs of sequins out of the place where lint, hair, and other debris collects. (Though something to watch out for in the washer-and-dryer-in-one-unit launderizers if you've got long hair, is hairballs in your laundry. It's really jarring at first, and then more jarring if you find you've missed one after you go out.) Then I spent a not insignificant chunk of time getting sequins off the floor, and sequins off my person, and sequins off every other thing that had been in there, and sequins off my person again, and sequins out of my BED... you know how confetti is hell to clean up? You know how glitter is hell to clean up? You know how things that have not enough glue to stay stuck if you want them to stick, but enough glue to stick places you do not want them to stick, until falling off at the worst possible moment, are general hell? Yeah. Like that.
Despite all this, the dress retained at least 75% of its sequins, and still had a decent amount of sparkle in the non-sequined areas, due to the metallic threads in the base fabric.
While all that was going on, Tria-fish realized that the plans for seeing the midnight showing of HP7.1 at the reasonably-local-to-her theatre had one small flaw: transportation. Way after midnight. Woops. She posted to Facebook regarding this little problem, offering to split a taxi with someone local, or a free ticket to someone who could provide a ride.
Thursday the 18th:
Late night, reading Facebook. Ooo, someone is plotting HP7.1? Sounds like fun! Woe is me, my budget is fucked due to too much coffee, and I am pulling coins from the cushions! Oho! There is an offer of a free ticket in exchange for transportation! And I have a full tank of gas and enough money for the bridge toll! Plotting ensues, and details are worked out.
In the morning, I did farmers market, stayed home most of the rest of the day, housecleaned, and car-cleaned, and took an amazing ton of bottles and cans to recycle and get the deposit back, which gave me enough money for maybe coffee too.
Evening: Potter. I dressed up in Slytherin colors, having decided that the disco ball dress was OK to wear at least as a costume to a movie opening, if not to anything requiring non-shedding sequins. For lo, the sequins were still dropping off it, and sticking to anything that brushed against it, including me. I spent significant amounts of the evening peeling sequins off my arms. The suckers are hard and no little sharp.
Called Dawn on my way there. Yay! I hadn't actually talked to her in what felt like months.
Then just about as I was pulling up in front of Tria's dorm looking for a place to park, Tif called. There was an exciting venture into the amount of sense I don't actually make when trying to talk logistics and the conversation is running on only the spare cycles I have when I'm in an unfamiliar area infested with college students and full of parking that has already been parked in by other people, attempting to find a parking spot. And of course anything that makes me less smart stresses me out more, because OMG MY BRAIN, even when I know the reason why, and that produces a nice feedback cycle. My brain just *goes away*. It's scary. In retrospect, I think my logistics-brain may do better in text. Because even when I've got all the cycles to devote to it when thinking aloud, I'm often reduced to saying "You know, the thing! With the stuff!" and this does not always work well unless the person I'm talking to is a brain-twin. Let alone under actual bad conditions. Eventually between my totally disconnected ramblings and everything, we figured that I should get off the phone and find somewhere to park, then start talking logistics. So we did just that. There were no tickets left for that showing, so even if I could have got from Berkeley to SF and back in time (which was in question because while I was early, I wasn't sure exactly *how* much time we had to play with), it wouldn't work. Alas.
Tria's phone had developed something spectacularly wrong with it between the recent weekend and now, and nothing could be heard on it, though it still transmitted sound fine. Thus there was texting. Better for logistics, but requiring parking in order to do it. So we exchanged notes while I was still parked, and I made my way back to the dorm and parked again. Then I picked up Tria and her friend.
Hilarity started to ensue, as we started chattering. Tria and her friend were very happy that this was actually going to work out, because it had been in question. Tria related how it was actually thanks to my sharing the tale of my adventures after RHPS on Halloween that she remembered to check transportation for the movie.
"Hey wait," her friend chimed in from the back seat. "You didn't remember that, I reminded you about transportation."
"Well, I was thinking about it!"
"I was still the one who said it first. And I was thinking about it because my friend got stuck in the city on Halloween after BART stopped running."
There was more good-natured squabbling, in which it turned out that her friend was in the city to see RHPS.
I commenced laughing. It was just too good to be true. Details emerged, and ... yes. The four giggling virgins who I'd assisted that night got to a diner and then got home safely. And one of them was new BFFs with Tria's friend.
"Text her!" Tria said. "Text her right now and tell her that you're in that lady's car AT THIS VERY INSTANT."
"And I'm wearing the same top!" I crowed, laughing so hard that the girls feared for my ability to find a parking spot safely. Sadly, Tria's friend did not have the number in her phone yet. We parked and headed in, and got pictures in front of the giant posters.
Instead of having interminable lines, they appeared to have shut down most of the rest of the theatre for the evening, so we were free to just go in and sit. So we sat. We giggled and gossiped, but soon found ourselves in need of entertainment. I pulled up supplementary materials on my phone, so Tria's friend got to read some of my weird and spooky fic, and also the Infamous Chocolate Penis Saga. Because Tria now shares the Chocolate Penis Saga with the world! It is spreading!
The intermission quiz thing was on a very, very short loop, and the answer to every question seemed to involve Yogi Bear, even more than it involved Potter. For the first five rounds or so, people were well-behaved, but then there started to be very bad and wrong answers shouted out, mostly switching Potter stuff with Yogi Bear stuff, and therefore way more funny than it deserved to be.
A group of people, all costumed for the event, decided that they would hold some impromptu entertainment, and they did a live-action performance of Mysterious Ticking Noise. It was great fun. (This video may have been that exact group, because they exhorted us to snap, and those lights look familiar.)
The security guy introduced himself to us all, and let us know that he would be in, out, and around during the show, and that if we needed him, to holler. I think his name was Mike? I can't remember.
Midnight (Friday the 19th) hit. The previews eventually started. Including Yogi Bear, which got an ironic cheer.
The movie was great fun. There were all sorts of things whispered back and forth, with particular attention to the Snatchers. I dropped the girls back at the dorm then went home.
My 4am review in IM, once I got back and got the worst of the sequins off me:
Movie good. The wandering about in the woods bits were sometimes interesting (interpersonal dynamics, everyone going mad with the locket on) and sometimes about on par with the long sweeping shots in Lord of the Rings: nice if you like that sort of thing, but could be tedious. But I liked the choices.
The Ron/Hermione thing was not badly done; it developed through "we are at each other's throats" and "we have had a thing for each other since like ever and we are handling it badly" (especially Ron, he was all jealousface at Harry) and into "dude I was worried sick, where the hell were you, you idiot, we missed you" and then into "we are all burned out and grieving and YOU ARE THERE AND YOU ARE HUMAN I WILL LEAN THE HELL ON YOU OKAY YOU ARE WARM"
Grindelwald was of course hot; we expected no less. There are many many disheveled men in nice clothes. The surprise was Mundungus Fletcher. I don't know how you pictured him, but I was picturing someone sort of cross between Filch and Wormtail. Instead we got a decorative short Italian fellow with the open shirt collar and everything, wheeling and dealing, and if you were in this universe I would suit your character up in flapper clothes and ship you with him, because he is the amoral attractive guy on the fringes of whatever the hell is going on, just trying to survive by whatever means he can.
Harry was less outright vile to Kreacher than the books, and Dobby was fuckin' heroic. Bellatrix is still knife-crazy, and Lucius is completely unhinged, marvelously so.
If the landscapes do not bore you to tears as Harry, Hermione, and Ron are getting unhinged, I think you will like.
The rest of the 19th: Slept. Walked with aunt and poodle on oceanfront promenade (rain). Found missing backup drive.
Crossposted.
