Magic in the Air

So! What did you do this weekend? Because I guarantee it wasn’t what I did, no matter who you are. We … well, folks, we went to a Quidditch match — the World Cup, in fact. Yes, QUIDDITCH. The mythical Harry Potter game? Yes, THAT. It seems something like five or six years ago, some college students decided to, uh, make it a real game and now there are TWENTY ONE COLLEGES with Quidditch teams. No, I don’t know why. But you guys, it’s … well, it’s serious, it what it is, with actual scores and these big HOOPS and seekers and bludgers and I don’t even know what else.

They run around the field on brooms. Brooms that do not fly. And they also wear capes. Yes. These kids wear CAPES and they take it SUPER-SERIOUSLY and the snitch? You know that little gold ball that Harry’s supposed to chase around and catch, and if they catch it, the game’s over? Yes, the snitch is a PERSON dressed in yellow — yellow tights, in most cases, with the little ball tucked into a sock dangling from the back of their shorts like a tail. And the snitch goes running around downtown like a CRAZY PERSON before finally showing up on the field and … wait, am I rambling? It was JUST. SO. RIDICULOUS. But also kind of awesome. No, it was definitely awesome.

Behold! Kids in capes on brooms beating each other to a pulp:

Sorry, we were kind of far away, but we were still very much in the action, and oh my God, really, what the hell, can you see that they’re carrying BROOMSTICKS BETWEEN THEIR LEGS?

The frightening part is that it did not, as it would seem, appear to be made up of D&D high school rejects, but was a reasonable cross-section of overly earnest liberal arts-focused college students. Bizarre, I tell you. Oh, and if you were wondering, Middlebury won out in the finals, grabbing the snitch in the nick of time from second-place winner Emerson College’s PURPLE-CLAD CLUTCHES.

(It was very dramatic. Or rather, anti-climactic, what with the snitch-grabbing and all.)

There is one person, however, who was less than impressed:

What the fuck, yo? Isn’t there some sort of EXERSAUCER PARTY I could be at instead? Jumperoo? Anything? Help?

Also, you should know that I cut and fixed my hair MAHSELF after that photo was taken, because although I love my hairdresser, there was a minor BANG SNAFU happening there, not to mention a lack of decent product or, uh, showering that day. Whatever. It’s much better now. Am haircutting genius! Just don’t ask me to cut yours.

On Quidditch Day, I also dropped my iPhone, and if you ever want to send your mother into some sort apoplectic fit wherein she thinks you’ve been abducted, please, lose your phone and have a stranger call her at home and ask about her youngest daughter. And then I returned home to six messages — SIX! — from my mother, brother, sister and father, all explaining in varying degrees of hysteria that a nice man named Joe found my phone. Which, you know, helpful and awesome and YAY JOE, seriously, but do you know that Joe only called my mother? And that my mother PANICKED and called the rest of my family, thinking that I was somewhere out in the ether and in some kind of DANGER, all because my phone fell out of the Ergo, oh my God?

I have a tendency to jump to worst-case scenario situations, no matter how statistically improbable. You see where this comes from, yes?

Anyway, Monday! Monday was SOMETHING! Monday involved a lot of this:

I wasn’t laughing at her, I swear, it’s just that two seconds before she was SMILING AT HER IMAGE and then … well, then this. But it matters not, because this was indicative of the ENTIRE AFTERNOON and the reason I pulled out PhotoBooth in the FIRST place. And might I add that this was BEFORE the dog ran off with part of my breast pump?

Monday was great, clearly.

Hey, happy Tuesday!

*Or, you know, THE GROUND. Badly Drawn Boy

22 comments October 26th, 2009