People, I'm actually quivering in anticipation.

Have you ever looked forward to something so much that you actually made yourself stop thinking about it so you wouldn't go nutso? I LOVE anticipation. I am the kid who knew where the Christmas presents were stashed and purposely did NOT look at them. Yeah.

That is ME now, with this movie called Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. You may have heard of it.

I am a bit of a Harry Potter fan. The height of my craze was the months leading up to the release of the last novel in the series - I re-read all of the books and found The Leaky Cauldron fansite, and a couple others. Finally, my sister and sister-in-law and I all went to the midnight book release party at the local Barnes & Noble. I may have to scrounge up the photo of us dressed at Hogwarts professors. OH YES WE DID dress up! Dudes, the book came out on my 30th birthday. How awesome is that.

After the final book was released, Entertainment Weekly had a special "commemorative" issue which dedicated TEN WHOLE PAGES to Potter trivia. I took it to OfficeMax to make some copies for my Harry Potter party (OH YES I DID! complete with butterbeer!) and then left the magazine in the copy machine! ARGH! Of course it wasn't turned in - someone stole that gem in the blink of an eye. And of course the extra copies from the publisher that I could have gotten for free were gone by the time I requested one. So I did what any sane (ha!), desperate Potter fan would do - I bought one off of Ebay for $10.

Last year when we exchanged names for Christmas gifts, the only option I gave the lucky person who drew my name was this sweatshirt. Guess what? I got it! Thanks, Jess!

Since the last movie and the final book came out 2 years ago, my obsession has tapered off quite a bit. But this new movie has renewed my devotion. Yes, I know it came out last night at midnight. My sister was there, and so was at least one other friend, who was actually updating her Facebook status while waiting for the show to start. Aaron and I are waiting until my birthday next Tuesday to go - it will be our first date since Adam arrived, and we've gone to all the other films together, too. They definitely fall into the category of movies better seen on the largest screen possible. (All the Lord of the Rings movies came out around our anniversary - isn't date planning easy for us?!)

While I'm trying to not get too worked up about this fantastic movie, I wandered over to The Leaky Cauldron and found a link to this Top 25 list. Very fun! And a good refresher for me of certain characters and what they have been up to.