ONELOWERLIGHT'S DAILY PHOTO SAFARI HAS MOVED!

Onelowerlight's Daily Photo Safari has moved to http://www.onelowerlight.com/photos. The .blogspot photoblog is no longer active. Please update your links/bookmarks and visit the new site!

Yeee-haw!

So this, is me and my roommate Steve, crashing the Harry Potter party at Barnes and Noble! It was F-U-N!!! Steve, on the roof, flying a broomstick, and me driving him in circles around the TONS and TONS of people who were outside of the store! People were cheering and taking pictures! It was fun! Since I told the story, I thought I'd at least put a picture up of it.

Also, I would like to announce that I am officially closing this blog. The daily photo safari WILL continue, just at a different location! That location is www.onelowerlight.com/photos. Please, if you've linked to this site, update your links so that they will point to my most recent work. Also, if you have any subscriptions or bookmarks that point here, you will probably want to change those too.

I really like the new setup! I got some hosting for my site and downloaded some special photoblogging software for it, and so far, I'm really impressed! I really think this is going to work out well! One side note, however; I'm going to be traveling to Massachusetts tomorrow, by train, so I might not be able to update the photo safari for a couple of days. I'm going to try, but if I can't, I'll be sure at least to post a photo for each of the days that I miss. I'm sure that I'll have plenty of opportunities to take some awesome photos! It's going to be a fun trip!

Harry Potter Costumes at the BYU Bookstore

Here is a bunch of bookstore employees, posing for a shot. It looks like they really got into it!

Quick! She's casting a spell on me!

More girls with ties. I wonder how many BYU students fantasize about going to school at Hogwarts?

There were several families at BYU who really got into it!

These guys were really funny! I like these costumes.

In the unlikely case that there's any confusion...

There's Steve again, trying to impress some of the French girls from Harry Potter IV.

Miz McGonigal! This was an excellent costume.

There were lots and lots of families at the bookstore, probably more than in other places in the country. Harry Potter really appeals to kids and families, so it's understandable that there would be so many families out.

Can you guess this costume? It's the sorting hat!

More wizards! Outside of Borders and Barnes and Noble, there were actually some guys who were selling thin tree branches that they'd carved into wands! My roommates remarked "gosh, we could have chopped down a tree and made $500!"

Dumbledore! Man, it would be crazy to have a beard like that! I wonder how long it would take?

Harry Potter Costumes at Barnes and Noble

So, here are a few more costumes from Harry Potter night. I'll do another post tomorrow with the last of the costumes, maybe do a couple more posts of the night, and then close down this blog. Don't worry! It's not because I'm quitting the photo-a-day project! In fact, you could say that I'm taking it to the next level! More on it later, but in the meantime, you should check out the new photoblog that I'm setting up.

For some reason, I found this costume really attractive, especially on this girl. I'm not sure exactly why. There were a few goths scattered around the crowd, but nothing too gross or scary. Mostly, they seemed to blend in.

A lot of the girls were wearing men's ties, which I thought was kind of funny. Probably has to do with the Hogwart's school uniform.

There were a LOT of little kids! These guys were pretty funny! They were so giddy and excited!

Hagrid! One of my favorite characters from the books.

I think this guy was dressed up as Harry. He looks quite a bit like him, too.

Who says Dumbledore is dead? Dumbledore was my favorite character from the books, so I was pretty disappointed to hear that he died. Someday, I'll read the series over again (I only got up to the fourth book before losing interest) and figure out exactly how and why it happened. Of course, Steve was running around, and he got in this shot here! He's a funny guy!

Harry Potter Costumes at Borders

Here are some of the more interesting photos of the costumes we saw as Steve and I crashed three Harry Potter parties. Since there were so many, I'll split it up into several posts. All of the photos here were taken at Borders in Orem.
That's my roommate Steve on the left. You'll see him in a lot of pictures. The whole night, he was running around with that broom making flying noises!

Everybody and their brother was wearing a maroon and yellow scarf, tie, or other article of clothing.

The girl to the right of Steve works with me at the MTC, and she's also going to be in the FLSR with me next year. We saw quite a few people we recognized!

There were a ton of kids, as well as teens and adults. More kids than you'd expect to see. I think that was a combination of Harry Potter's appeal to children and the fact that this is Utah.

The guy with the white head looks like the silver surfer in a black suit.

This girl looks like a nymph from an ancient Greek myth. More devoted Harry Potter fans will have to enlighten me as to the character that she's trying to imitate.

This guy wasn't dressed up as any particular character; he just figured it was a good excuse to put on a cloak and hang out at Borders insanely late. Seriously, that's prettymuch what he told me.

This ladies here told me and Steve who we were (even though we put on our costumes without really trying to be any particular character at all!) Steve was Cedric, and I was Charlie Weasely, who, in the seventh book, ...just kidding! No spoilers on this blog. Personally, I was going more for J K Rowling's husband, but an actual character is good. And don't you wish I'd post a picture of myself up here! Heh, heh--sorry!

This girl, by far, was more in character than anyone else I saw. I don't remember who she was, but she had the act down solid. I can just hear her saying to me now, "what do you MEAN acting? I'm so confused. You muggles are so difficult to understand!"

There were tons of people camped out under the bookshelves! It was crazy! Like some kind of rock concert in a bookstore! And yes, there actually was a band playing! It was INSANE!

Harry Potter Release Night at the BYU Bookstore

My roommate Steve and I went Harry Potter party hopping tonight, and it was a LOT of fun! There will be many pictures on this site of it in the next couple of days, including some AWESOME pictures of Steve riding on top of my van, wearing a cape and a busboy uniform with a broom underneath him, while we bust out with some awesome Final Fantasy music as we drive past the hordes of Harry Potter fans crowded outside of Barnes and Noble! How awesome is THAT? It was pretty freaking amazing! But those will be coming soon--I have a lot of playing around with them to do before they look good. In the meantime, here are some photos from the BYU bookstore, where we were at midnight.

Whenever there's a huge line at the bookstore, they usually have someone with this sign at the end of the line, wherever that line has woven its way in between the shelves and aisles. But tonight, the line was so long that not even the bookstore itself could contain it! It stretched all the way to the freaking JFSB on the other side of campus! Huge! Instead, the person with this sign just directed people to the door!

A lot of people really camped out for this! It was about 11:45 pm when I took this shot, and the first person in line had been waiting since 8:00 pm. There were all kinds of awesome costumes, but I'll save all those shot for another post.

The moment the Harry Potter books are unveiled! A huge scream erupted from across the bookstore when this happened!

The reaction from the ravenous hordes as, at long last, they lay their eyes on the prize.

The staff at the bookstore really went out with the costumes. This guy was waving around the book to add to the excitement.

And, the line starts moving! It actually moved very fast, because there were too lines. The first line was to buy a receipt showing that you'd payed for the book, and the main line was to pick up your copy(ies). Since everyone had already bought a receipt before midnight, actually picking up the book was very quick and easy. The workers at the BYU bookstore told me they'd be opened until sometime past one, whereas at Borders, the workers told me that they'd be there sometime past four; that's how significant of a difference this method had.

Stocking up the tables as the people eagerly come to pick up their copies. There were a ton of copies, and they all went very, very fast!

These girls were jumping up and down the whole time they were picking up their copies. There was a LOT of excitement in the bookstore!

These guys came running out of the bookstore screaming and yelling, they were so excited! They paused long enough for me to take this picture, then ran off yelling and screaming again! The mass hysteria was crazy! Definitely better than getting drunk somewhere!

National Ice Cream Day at the Creamery on Ninth

Apparently, this month is national ice cream month, and to commemorate that, the BYU creamery was selling ice cream at fifty cents a cone today. Also, today is my father's birthday. As a side note, I don't believe in coincidences.

I went up with my roommate Steve to get some ice cream. It was pretty good! I basically paid for both of us out of the spare change that floats around in my car. Understandably, the ice creams were a lot smaller than usual, but it was still very awesome.

While we were walking around in the creamery, we ran into these girls enjoying their ice cream on the floor. They posed for a picture. It's been a while since I've been to the creamery on ninth; it's mostly frequented by freshmen and married students, due of course to the close proximity of Heritage and Wymount. It's actually kind of funny, because on one aisle, you'll find all kinds of baby food, and down around the corner, you'll find a bunch of freshmen kids hanging out. I have no idea if these girls were freshmen or not, but it's not hard to find them in the store.

Playing on the Floor During Church

When I was in Idaho, I went to a friend's mission farewell (technically, it's not a farewell, since they got rid of those, but it's traditional for missionaries to give a talk in church their last Sunday before leaving, and we call those farewells). While I was there, I noticed this little girl playing around on the ground next to me. It reminded me of when I was her age and my parent gave me paper to draw on to pass the time during sacrament meeting. It's not too unusual in a Mormon chapel to have the kids playing around at the parents' feet. It's also not too uncommon for couples to have their arms around each other's shoulders, or to have a lot of screaming babies. I suppose that's different from some traditional Protestant chapels, where (so I've heard) the kids are kept strictly in line and no form of PDA is considered socially acceptable. Different cultures for sure. Well, I snapped a picture and here it is.

Good news! I recently invested in a hosting service so that I can upgrade this blog using Pixelpost! I'm really looking forward to it! The shift should happen this Friday, if all goes well. I really don't know the first thing about PHP or MySQL, but hopefully once it's set up, it will run itself until I learn. I do have a lot of friends who can help. We'll see how it all works. I'm all giddy and excited!

Studying Next To Turtles In The Duck Pond

I just happened to be walking down by the duck pond today, and as I was in a hurry to get somewhere, I glanced over and saw all these turtles gathered on top of this floating log! It was too good to pass up. As usual, there was someone sitting down doing something on one of the benches, so I framed it with her in it as well. The light glinted pretty sharply off the backs of those turtles, and I was't able to patch it up on gimp or photoshop.