The Harry Potter premiere was great. The Portland gang met up at a British pub near our house called the Horse Brass Pub. We picked it because it's that dark wood walled, dart boarded, smokey, English-style place that also serves authentic British fare--like scotch eggs. If you don't know what a scotch egg is, (and if your cholesterol is above 200 or you are on Lipitor, don't even read the description, because even THAT will be enough to give you a coronary) it's English sausage packed around a hard-boiled egg and then deep-fat fried. Just reading the menu description was making me feel queasy. I ended up getting the standard fish and chips, which were great. We like going to that pub for Harry Potter events (we went there the night of the last book release, too) because it gives us a chance to imagine we're in Hogsmeade (and for the others in the gang, I'm sure the fact that they serve traditional British beers has NOTHING to do with humoring me on the Hogsmeade thing). After eating, we headed over to the theatre and got there early enough to get pretty good seats. We all didn't get to sit together, but we weren't talking during the movie anyway. The movie was by far the best one to date, and certainly the darkest. It did have its moments of levity, however--my favorite being a quote by Professor MacGonagal talking about expected behavior at the Yule Ball. She said she wanted, "well-mannered frivolity," which is coincidentally what we called our behavior in the mission when called into the mission president's office.

On the way home, we were met with even MORE excitment. (I know--how much more could we handle, but we managed, somehow.) Going down the main road from the theatre, we could see a lot of flashing lights from a fire truck. As we neared it, we could see a building actually on fire--not just smoke, but huge flames shooting out of the front windows! We were the last car to pass by before they closed off the road, and I didn't notice that they'd just pulled the fire hose across the street, and drove over it. In a classic gesture, I could see the fireman in the rear-view mirror shaking his fist at me for doing that--WHO still shakes their fist at people? What is that supposed to mean, or even accomplish? It just felt like he was the villain from some Scooby Doo cartoon and we had just nabbed him, and he, shaking his fist, says, "I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"