22 July 2007

Birthday Outings

On Friday I went out in Bradford as part of my birthday celebrations although my birthday is not until 24th I wanted to take advantage. Normally for these I would go out in Leeds as I go out for dinner with friends at work but this year decided not to bother and as Bradford is closer to home the taxi works out cheaper.

First of all we went to see the new Harry Potter Film (Order Of The Phoenix). There was obviously a lot of material that was omitted from the film due to the length of the novel but it had the important storylines in there. I did enjoy it although I thought the way the scenes with Dumbledore and Voldemort fighting in the Ministry of Magic were staged too much like Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones with the fight between Yoda and Dooku. Anyway much to someone's chagrin I spent the entire time we were sat in the cinema knitting and I produced:

Admittedly it isn't particularly a difficult piece of knitting as its the first half of a blanket square but nonetheless I did it at the cinema and it was KIP'd! I thought better of getting MM to take pics of me in the cinema knitting due to copyright and piracy issues and the cinema staff jumping on me even though it would be either before or after the main picture was on.

We then went and had dinner at Nawaab. It wasn't until I got there that I found out that Nawaab is the company that supplied Princess Diana with a take-away. I think I'll be going elsewhere in future!

After we finished dinner we went to queue outside Waterstones. Given that it was 11.00pm and the queues that I've encountered for the past two books in Leeds thought it would be rather lonely. How wrong was I!?! The queue was wormed round the store. As midnight approached the exchange of phone calls and text messages between me and other family members increased. Anyway midnight came and went and we got closer to the front. About 12.20 my friend rang to tell me that he had bought his and was on his way home. Not only did he get his earlier than me but also gets a staff discount for the company he works at (ggrrr). When we finally got to the till to pay 2 copies (one had been pre-ordered) and a t-shirt just happened to fall into my hands. After looking at the time (12.30am) I rang my friend to let him know I had got my copies. MM and I then got a taxi and went home.

The intention was that I was going to sit up all night and read it cover to cover. However, this fell by the wayside. This wasn't because I was too tired to carry on but because a certain young lady

had decided to pull out her stitches the vet had so kindly put in after she had her op on Tuesday. I did think about lifting her tail and spanking her btm but she gave me snuffles in a nice tone of voice so I had an early night. When I got up on Saturday I rang the vet and spoke to the nurse who said she would speak to him and call me back. I was due to see him anyway at my local surgery which is 7 doors from where I live on the same day but thought it best to ring in case he needed to bring anything over with him. The nurse rang me back and advised me that I would have to take Gibber over to the Keighley surgery. Well I got into a taxi and took her over. The vet had a look and said that he wouldnt bother putting them back in again but I would need to keep an eye on it. After a brief chat about how she was getting on it transpired that I should have been given some medication for her which I'd not received which I did take away with me this time. He also mentioned the possibility of fitting a collar although this was vetoed as she's a very fashion-conscious lady ;0)

Gibber is doing extremely well considering the surgery and loving and friendly as always.

Anyway when I got home I finished reading the book. I had intended on doing an exact timing of how long it took me to read it but I just did a more general timing and it took 4 1/2 hours cover to cover. I'm not going to give away any spoilers as that's not fair. I was right about several of my assumptions of what was going to happen although not necessarily in the way I had. I'm going to be interested to see it on the large screen although it will probably be in four years' time but I'll be booking the day off and seeing it on the day of release.