A great article from the New York Times 8/28/2007

10 Things to Do Before This Article is Finished

1) Write a catchy opener.

"Zen has no goals," according to a traditional koan. “It is always on its way.” If so, Rachael Hubbard, a preschool teacher in Salem, Ore., will not be accompanying it. Ms. Hubbard has many goals ... 78, to be exact. And it is only by dutifully ticking them off, she said, that she has found her path toward enlightenment.

Two years ago Ms. Hubbard compiled what is known as a life list, a contract with herself enumerating dozens of goals she hoped to accomplish before she died (build a house for Habitat for Humanity, read “Pride and Prejudice,” etc.) and posted it online. "I just felt like I was slowly getting older and was looking around saying, “Well, I haven’t really done a whole lot with my life yet,” she recalled. But once she began the journey prescribed by her list, it quickly became an addiction. “Earn a master’s degree.” (No. 5): check. “See a dinosaur fossil.” (No. 27): check. As for her latest challenges, “become quadri-lingual” or “swim with dolphins,” well, she is only 24. “Hey, I am actually accomplishing things with my life,” she said, even if it’s little by little.

2) Distill the point of this article in a “nut graph.”

Once the province of bird-watchers, mountain climbers and sufferers of obsessive- compulsive disorder, the life list has become widely popular with the harried masses, equal parts motivational self-help and escapist fantasy.

3) Demonstrate the popularity of life lists.

Evidence of the lists’ surging popularity is all around. The travel writer Patricia Schultz currently has two “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” books lodged on The New York Times paperback advice best-seller list, two in an avalanche of recent life-list books, like “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” and “101 Things to Do Before You Turn 40.”

In December, Warner Brothers will release Rob Reiner’s “Bucket List,” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as cancer patients who set out on a series of life-list adventures, including a Harley ride on the Great Wall of China.

Multiple life-list oriented social-networking Web sites have cropped up, inviting strangers to share their lists and offer mutual encouragement. Even Madison Avenue has chimed in. Visa is currently running a print campaign built around a checklist called “Things to Do While You’re Alive” (and credit-worthy, presumably).

4) Offer an explanation of the phenomenon.

And no wonder life lists are so ubiquitous. They are, proponents say,the perfect way for anxious time-crunched professionals to embark on spiritual quests in a productivity-obsessed age. The lists are results-oriented, quantifiable and relentlessly upbeat. If Aristotle were alive, he might envy the efficiency of a master list in which the messy search for meaning in life is boiled down to a simple grocery list: “get a tattoo,” “learn to surf.”

5) Consult the experts.

“People are dying to make this list, and most haven’t been given a chance since grade school,” said Josh Petersen, a founder of the Robot Co-op, a Seattle company that runs the Web site 43Things.com, which since 2004 has enrolled 1.2 million members who post customized life lists, find others with similar goals and encourage one another to check them off. Sky diving ranks 24th in popularity; losing weight,unsurprisingly, is first. “Pull a prank involving 100 lawn gnomes” is a goal shared by 65 members.

“In school you’re asked, “What do want to be when grow up?” Mr. Petersen said. “Then people stop asking the question.” Caroline Adams Miller, a life coach and motivational-book author in Bethesda, Md., asks that her clients create their own list of 100 things to accomplish. “What it does is give you a road map for your life,” she said. “To check items off your list gives you a sense of self-efficacy, or mastery.”

Gary Marcus, a psychology professor at New York University, agrees that people are happiest when making progress toward clear-cut goals, but said that those who set unreasonable goals (or overly ambitious timelines to meet them) set themselves up for stress. “Evolution vested us with a carrot “happiness” and a stick “anxiety,” he explained. “We feel happy when we make progress toward our goals, anxious when we don’t.”

6) Include the celebrity angle.

There was a time when life lists seemed mostly favored by overachievers who viewed their years on earth as heroic narratives. As recounted in “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” the motivational speaker and self-described adventurer John Goddard wrote a list of 127 life goals when he was 15 … pilot the world’s fastest aircraft, milk a poisonous snake and now, at age 88, says he has checked off 110 of them. (He has yet to visit the moon.)

The college football coach Lou Holtz jotted down a life list of 107 items that included telling jokes on “The Tonight Show” and winning a national championship. By 1988 he had done both.

Last year Ellen DeGeneres asked celebrity guests to share their lists on her talk show. Orlando Bloom vowed to learn to play the bongos. Beyonce Knowles promised to take ballet lessons.

7) Return to the experiences of everyday people.

Non-celebrities tend to use their lists to overcome more-fundamental hurdles. Stacey Morris, 40, a sales manager at a housewares company in Ventnor, N.J., created a 100-item list after consulting with Ms. Miller, the life coach, because she said she felt unmotivated and “needed more focus.” Several of her items seemed vague (develop a more positive attitude,” for example), but the goals have forced her to take specific steps toward self-improvement, she said.

To make good on her vow to “develop persistence,” she trained herself to pause at work every 15 minutes to record the activities she had just finished. The point, she said, is to eliminate distractions like inessential phone calls. She says she has doubled her daily productive hours. “Having a life list,” she said, “changed my life.”

When she turned 40, Jill Smolinski, a single mother and freelance writer in Los Angeles, drew up a life list that unearthed ambitions she hadn’t known she had. “The first thing I wrote was ‘live in a beach house,’” said Ms. Smolinski, now 46. “That’s weird. I didn’t even know that was important to me. Within a week, I was going for a walk and noticed a beach house for rent,” she said, adding, “and I’m standing in it right now.” The list also yielded a novel. Her book “The Next Thing on My List,” about a woman who vows to live out a dead friend’s life list, was published in April by Shaye Areheart Books.

8) Explore grand theories about the lists’ popularity.

Ms. Schultz, the travel author, who has sold 2.5 million copies of her first book and has seen it spun off into games, desk calendars and a Travel Channel show, surmised that there were demographic factors behind the sudden interest in this alluring, if gimmicky, pursuit.

“Seventy-nine million of us baby boomers are at a point in our life that this is the moment to stop and take stock,” she said. Ms. Schultz, 54, added that she had visited 80 percent of her 1,000 must-see places. “If ever there was an awareness that this is no dress rehearsal, this is it.”

Those in midlife, wrestling with issues of personal worth, seem to be the target for many of the life-list books, like “Fifty Places to Play Golf Before You Die,” by Chris Santella (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2005).

But Justin Zackham, 36, who wrote the screenplay for “The Bucket List” and was one of its executive producers, argues that the life-list impulse is actually strongest among members of Generation X, like himself: those who have grown up watching boomers stress out over high-paying conventional jobs and have vowed to chart their own course. “We grew up as a generation questioning all that, said Mr. Zackham, whose own life list includes sky diving (check) and get a bunch of movies made(check). “People do more lists now because they are actually thinking outside the typical progression of what life is supposed to be like.”

9) Postulate that life lists show a universal longing for adventure,fulfillment and grace.

The concept of the life list is as old and American as the self-improvement regimen that the young Jay Gatsby scribbled inside his tattered copy of “Hopalong Cassidy,” in which he vowed to “practice elocution, poise and how to attain it.” Decades later the life lists of average Americans do not seem unlike those of people who strived to be extraordinary, and became so. For a companion book to “The Bucket List,” Mr. Zackham collected life lists from dozens of celebrities and high achievers. Jerry Rice, the football great, said he wished to visit Rome. Mr. Freeman, the actor, said he hoped to attain the perfect golf swing.

“These people pretty much want the same thing you do,” Mr. Zackham said. So how extraordinary are they or how un-extraordinary are you?

10) Find a humorous kicker.

Then again, some Americans lead lives too extraordinary to augment with a life list. For his book, Mr. Zackham visited Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion and asked him what he still hoped to experience.

"Nothing," was Mr. Hefner's answer to him. He said, "I honestly can't think of anything I don't already have."

concert review

On Saturday night, Caleb took me to the Josh Groban concert at the Honda Center (formerly better known as the Anaheim Pond). It was my birthday present, just in case you're thinking you didn't know Caleb like you thought you did. This was all me, having been a Josh Groban fan since my sister introduced me to him several years ago. Caleb, being the wonderful husband he is, knew I'd been wanting to go, and so not only bought me the tickets, but agreed to be my date.

We arrived at the Pond a little late, (having lost track of time at dinner) but fortunately there was an opening act, so we hadn't missed anything. We were even MORE grateful for the opening act when, upon finally arriving at the doors, we had to wait in line for guards with metal-detector wands to frisk us! Who knew the Josh Groban crowd was such a rough one? We finally got in and wound our way up to the uppermost level, and eventually found our places in the great sardine box of arena seating, settling ourselves literally into the middle of Row N, seats 7 and 8.

Now, whether or not you're a Josh Groban fan, it cannot be denied the man can sing. At just 25, he's been dubbed "The Voice," and the name fits. He could sing the phone book and still move an audience to tears. For me this is most evident as he sings in French, Spanish, Italian ... I have no idea what he's saying, but he can still stir the emotions.

However, fan or not, I wasn't sure what the evening would hold. I expected him to be a bit awkward, try to be funny and not succeed, have a hard time interacting with his audience. I have no idea what gave me this impression, but I couldn't have been further from the truth.

The concert opened with a LOT of fanfare ... an enormous stage with a seven-person band, backed by a 12-person orchestra. There were lights and video to accompany every song. It was a bit overproduced in my opinion, and yet his vocal ability still outshone everything else vying for attention. His voice could probably handle a construction zone in the background.

Near the beginning of the concert, he stopped and had a short discussion with the audience. He readily admitted his music is gushy and romantic. He is keenly aware of his mostly female, mostly older audience, and even admits his music can be "gag-me-with-a-spoon romantic." And then he went on to say he speaks through his music better than with actual conversation, and encourages any man in the room, who might have the same problem, to go ahead and use his music to speak to the woman in his life. "Here honey, track 3. My words through Groban's mouth," he says. And then promises those men they'll have a good night. He's probably right.

Maybe it was his comfort level with himself that made him so likable. He knows exactly what kind of audience he attracts, exactly how his music is viewed by the public, and he's exactly OK with that. As he runs all over the stage and interacts with the crowd, you can tell he simply loves what he does. And he'll never make any excuses for why he's not in any other kind of music.

The other thing that struck me was his ability to treat a crowd of 15,000 like they were only 150. Half-way through the concert, after an amazing violin solo by his lead violinist, Luce Micarelli (we think it was the famous Led Zeppelin solo), he showed up in the audience to sing "In Her Eyes." He walked down the first tier level onto the back part of the floor, and then through the crowd on the floor to get to the stage. Even for the 4 bodyguards and the cameraman, he was nearly overcome by the crowd. (We think this is the reason we were frisked on the way in.) But he shook hands with fans and let his picture be taken, all the way back to the stage.

And later in the show he sat on the edge of the stage to sing a song from the musical "Sweeney Todd," (as he so nonchalantly put it, "The play about a butcher who kills people and then his wife turns them into meat pies and sells them."). As he sat singing, he was also signing autographs and invited a young girl (7 or 8 years old) to sit next to him on the stage. He asked her if she'd sign all the autographs on that side.

At another moment he asked if the audience would mind if he just did karaoke the rest of the night ... and then proceeded to do spot-on renditions of Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" and Elton John's "Tiny Dancer," which he had to stop quickly, claiming he didn't know any more of the words. Again, it was like he was sitting in a living room playing for family and friends.

Throughout the show he accepted gifts from fans, including a cowboy hat, "because, that makes sense," a child's drawing of his dog, handcuffs, and a giant fortune cookie. He also accepted an over-sized check for $5,000 made out to his foundation, which helps children in need around the world. And with each person who came to the stage, he chatted with them like they were the only person in the arena.

My only critique of the evening was the apparent fact that The Pond is not set up for concerts. The music didn't bounce well in the huge arena and left the ears ringing with out-of-whack resonance. There were a few songs that still sounded clear, including my favorite "Remember When it Rained."

I think in the future I would love to see Josh Groban in a setting built for acoustics, like the Hollywood Bowl or the Greek Theater. That would be amazing, I think. Even so, Saturday night's concert was even better than I'd anticipated, I think mostly because Josh himself was such a comfortable, self-effacing, and engaging performer.

Well, and he can sing.

The evening ended with the obligatory encores ... three this time. The first one he ended by playing a drum solo himself. The second encore he finally sang his famous "You Raise Me Up." Yes, its a bit ... schmaltzy. But you just can't help but get caught up in it. Its a beautiful song. And the final encore was a song not on any of his albums, but one of his favorites. I don't know what it was called, but the lyrics went something like "this won't last forever, but you can sit by my side today." I really liked the song, and hope it ends up on an album someday. It was an appropriately sappy ending for an evening of gag-me-with-a-spoon sentimentality ... and I loved it all.

amy's birthday

Today is my sister Amy's birthday. Happy Birthday Amy! She's hit that milestone of 25 years old, 1/4 of a century. Congratulations! (This picture is of her and Becka, her lifelong best friend (and, incidentally, my boss's oldest daughter), at last night's birthday party. Between them is the seat of Amy's new bike, her big present of the evening.)

the necessary evil

I'm a crafter. I craft. Mostly I use yarn for my crafts, but sometimes I need paper for my scrapbooks, fake flowers for my home, or baskets to hold things. Unfortunately, there is only one convenient and reasonably priced place around town where ALL of these items can be found.

Michael's. The necessary evil.

I don't know if you have to frequent this chain craft store, but if you do, I know you feel my pain. Michael's has the worst customer service of just about any store I have to visit. I usually can't find anyone to help me when I need help, and then if I do happen to locate a salesperson, they rarely know the answer to my question and are generally unwilling to go to any effort to help me find it. Therefore, I usually avoid having questions when I'm there. Its just less ... infuriating.

Today I had to go for some yarn to finish a project I'm working on, and a few other miscellaneous things. As I wandered around I came across an aisle PACKED, floor to ceiling, with Halloween paraphernalia. Somewhere on those shelves was a toy making what were supposed to be scary noises. I didn't bother walking down the aisle to investigate. Call me crazy, but I'm simply not ready for Halloween in August. What is it with retailers? I understand being prepared for what's to come, but Halloween is still more than two months away!

And then, as I continued to walk, I started to register what my eyes were seeing. I couldn't believe it at first, but as I looked closer, I realized I was looking at reindeer. And then I saw ornaments, and toy villages covered in fake snow. No. NO. Say it isn't so!!! Christmas! Christmas has arrived at Michael's in the middle of the summer!! Now, I love Christmas as much as the next person. Ask my coworkers, I usually start the Christmas music just before Thanksgiving and love to have my tree up at the very beginning of December. But ... but ... its August! I'm still in flip flops and enjoying the warm weather. We're still barbequing almost every night. And Michael's wants me to buy ornaments and reindeer!

I refuse to be pushed into the holiday season, especially by the necessarily evil Michael's chain store. Yes, they serve needs of mine, but I do not have to follow their lead. I will choose to follow Grandma Lois's advice and "be where you are." And where I am is in August, enjoying the sunny weather and the smell of BBQ in the air. I look forward to Christmas, but I won't be spending the weekend decking it in fake snow.

my five year plan

A good friend recently challenged me to write down my five year goals. Not just any five-year goals, I was to write down the ideal. If money, circumstance and time were no real issue, what would I want my life to look like five years from now? Its an excellent exercise, and I'd encourage any of you to try it.

I've personally been thinking about this a lot lately. Which is weird, because I didn't used to be a goal setter. I liked to just do stuff as it came to mind. But the older I get, the more purposeful my life gets. There are things I really want to do in life, and I only have one life to live! So its either make plans to do it, or let go of the dreams. And since I'm rather attached to my dreams, I've decided to make plans to achieve them, and live the life I want to live. So, though I haven't mapped out the myriad steps required to reach this point, here is my ideal situation in 5 years (or a little longer).

I am not just an aspiring writer, I actually get regular freelance jobs, and bring in enough extra money to supplement Caleb's income and make ends meet. Caleb is working his dream job, and selling more and more of his own photos on the side. We have two kids (another one on the way?), they're young, and a total joy to spend a day with. We take too many pictures of them and send too many to friends and family. But we're excused because our kids really ARE the cutest kids they've ever known. Because of my writing career, I get to stay at home with them. I write during nap time, and on rare occasions when my or Caleb's parents take them for an afternoon. We live in a modest size home in the suburbs. The decorating is my own eclectic creation, ranging from the log cabin look to the romantic bohemian look. There are always areas of the house that need fixing or to finish decorating. The kitchen is a deep red with white cabinets and fake-marble countertops. We have a giant backyard where the family dog can run to his heart's content. He's a big dog, a mutt we rescued from the local animal shelter, with big brown eyes and droopy ears. He doesn't drool or shed, which we find a perfect miracle. When I'm not writing or spending time with my family, I'm knitting projects for the Christmas boutique I'm a part of every year. It brings in extra money during a particularly expensive season. I've been able to keep my weight down to between 135 and 140, and I actually have a pretty good handle on my eating habits, and my family's. I've become a much better cook since I was able to stay home. Caleb and I still take several camping trips a year, usually with kids in tow. But sometimes we plan weekend backpacks just for us. We attempt to hike a new part of an old trail, or a new trail altogether, each time we get the chance. Why go somewhere you've already been when you can explore someplace new? Though sometimes we find great comfort in visiting old beloved haunts. We're very involved in our church, still loving our small group. Its changed over the years, but we're still close friends with those couples we met early on. I have grown tremendously in my own relationship with the Lord. I finally made regular personal Bible study a priority, and God has honored my study with a deeper relationship with him. I'm teaching my kids about Jesus, and prayer and faith are regular parts of our daily lives. My relationship with Caleb has only grown in time, we've weathered the times well, whatever they brought, and have chosen to become stronger through them instead of letting anything come between us. We've grown more alike as our personalities rub off on each other. I've become more spontaneous and easy going, he makes lists before going to the hardware store. Life ebbs and flows as we pour our lives into each other, our friends and families. Its a good life, and we are content.

I know that sounds a little white-picket-fence-y. But its true. Its what I want. The things I'm not so sure of are the ways God will stretch and grow me in that time. I don't know what he will challenge us to do, or where he'll challenge us to go. But my goals include wanting to have enough sensitivity to his calling to know it when I hear it, and enough flexibility to go where and when I'm being asked. I think its important to have goals, and even to pursue them. I'm a firm believer in life being what we make of it. But I want to be careful not to be TOO content. Which is why I believe it is also imperative to remember that God has a plan, a good plan, but it might not match mine line for line. Flexibility is essential when pursuing our dreams. The path just might curve in directions that weren't part of the original plan. I have a sneaking suspicion that those will be the times of greatest growth, which makes them unavoidable when growth is part of the plan. But if its God who's leading us in those directions, I want to make sure I'm open enough to follow, to deviate from the plan.

Its overly quoted only because its so true, but Jeremiah 29:11 needs to ring true in my heart, "I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."

the old becomes new

I didn’t really feel like going to Bible study tonight. I was tired, and the study was on Psalm 139, an old familiar Psalm, about which I was sure I already knew everything. By 4:00 this afternoon I was literally teetering on the fence, about ready to fall on the side of just going home and knitting the evening away. But, for some reason still unbeknownst to me, I decided to actually go.

This might never happen to you, but sometimes I get caught up in thinking I already know a lot. I am a classically trained missionary, after all. I’ve had some of the best Christian training money can buy, and even been tested by fire through my years in China. Its true that my spiritual growth was rampant during that time, and I am grateful for the great lessons God taught me. They are still very real in my life today.

But I need to be reminded now and then that those years in China didn’t teach me everything, and I don’t know it all. Not by a long shot. But for just one or two other women in the room, everybody at the study tonight was over 50. Though I missed some of the girlfriends I usually sit with at events such as these, I was reminded what a blessing it can be to be in a room full of women full of wisdom, wisdom hard won through years of both easy and hard times. The combined knowledge and experience in that room, was rich. And though we studied a Psalm we’ve all known since childhood, it came alive for me again tonight.

Psalm 139 is filled with the basic truths of our position in God’s eyes. Tonight I find myself in awe, and humbled, as I recognize that in spite of my wickedness and sinfulness, I serve a God who loves me, thinks of me, cares for me, and guides me. And more than anything, he forgives me my depth of sin, and when he looks on me he sees a perfect and holy child of God. How arrogant am I to place these things under the “ho-hum” category! I realize I can’t go around every minute of every day lost in the deepest sense of awe and gratitude for what God has done for me, but I’ve certainly let some of these truths slide to the further reaches of my heart of late. I’ve relied much on what I learned in my years in college and in China. I haven’t taken much effort to renew that stride of growth in my life now. And as I have ceased to spend quality time with God, those lessons of old become relegated to narrow streams of knowledge, and nearly completely lost from my heart.

Tonight I am thankful that something, whatever it was, got me to Bible study. Regardless of what passage we might be studying, God’s Word is ALIVE. It speaks to us, if we’ll only let it. I was not an avid studier this summer, and several weeks of this short 6-week study I didn’t even bother to do the short study beforehand. But I was there, every week, and though I didn’t remotely deserve it, God honored it, and revealed himself to me once again. Just being in the presence of those women, and delving into God’s Word, however familiar it might be, has made Him real in my life … real in a way I haven’t known Him in a while. And I am more grateful than I can express.

the frustrated doer

I am a “doer.” And the longer I live, the more impatient I become with waiting. If there’s something I want, I go after it. When presented with a problem, I figure out how to solve it. When things aren’t the way I like, I change them. I like to try different doors, and when they don’t open, I try the windows. I’m always ready to set goals, and then figure out how many little goals I need to set along the way to get there. I like charts and graphs and schedules and maps. I refuse to sit around and wait for life to happen to me. Life’s too short. I want to make things happen, and the quicker the better. So I figure out what I want to do, and then I figure out how to get there. Simple.

But lately I’ve been presented with quandaries. It turns out that sometimes in life, circumstances can’t be so easily and immediately changed. And this drives me absolutely batty! I have always had a hard time with the Lord when his answer to my question is simply, “Wait, wait on the Lord.” But why? (Insert 2-year-old whiney voice.) Why can’t we just figure this out now and move on? These futile questions are often followed with more of the “just wait” rhetoric. As Inigo Montoya so eloquently put it in The Princess Bride … “I hate waiting.”

I’m sure the mature who read my blog are already saying to themselves, “but waiting builds character.” And though I know they’re right (even from my own past experiences), I still don’t like it. Waiting is a difficult endeavor for action-oriented souls (which is probably why we’re offered so many opportunities to practice it).

Part of my waiting right now includes the fact that I’ve been presented with a problem I can’t figure out how to solve. For the girl who took five years of math in four years of high school, I can be severely irritated by a problem I can’t solve. I’ve researched, I’ve inquired, I’ve interviewed … and still I come up short on answers to my questions. And I can’t change my circumstances until I find solutions to the problems. It can be so frustrating!

And herein lies my conundrum. I don’t want to sit in this period of waiting on the Lord with nothing but impatience and complaining for company. That is NOT a solution (and I believe my husband would wholeheartedly agree). I might be caught where I am for a while, but its no excuse to be discontent …

Ah, discontent … the opposite of content. The further I dig into my own psyche, the more I realize that the bottom line here has more than a little something to do with contentedness. There is a contentedness to be found at the other side of change, but there is sometimes also a contentedness required of us when change is impossible … or at least impossible at the moment.

I wish I knew the easy way to contentedness. But search as I might, I haven’t found that book at the library yet. I remember once listening to Elizabeth Elliot speak on the Secrets of Serenity. How that woman ever truly attained serenity, after all she had been through, was a secret indeed. I just wish I remembered more of HOW she found serenity, not just THAT she found serenity. But I figure if SHE can do it, surely those of us with less severe circumstances can find it. Though sometimes I think its those who have the least problems who end up doing the most complaining. Hmm, there’s a lesson there, isn’t there? I think I need to stop before I truly teach myself something. For now, it is enough to recognize that I can’t whine and complain my way out of my problems. And no matter the problem, and no matter how easily solved, serenity is worth pursuing … for our own sanity, as well as everyone around us.

Maybe the goal to be set here is serenity itself. (I know, now we're all quoting Kraemer and George's dad from Seinfeld ... "Serenity Now!") Its not about laying down and choosing to simply accept the circumstances, but there is a way to ride the circumstances, while we're waiting for the answers on how to change them, with grace and peace instead of straining and fighting and complaining. Its a lofty goal, but I bet I can come up with a chart on how to reach it.

no spoilers, i promise

I will quickly admit to the fact that I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. I have LOVED the books, and even enjoyed the movies (which, as with most movies-from-books, leave out so much good stuff). As soon as I could pre-order The Deathly Hallows from Amazon, I did. And then it came, arrived on my doorstep precisely on July 21. I had madly finished another book I was reading the night before, so I would be ready.

It took me over a week to finish the 753 or so pages. It was a busy week, which is why it took so long. But as much as I wanted to get to the end, I was also greatly enjoying being in the midst of the story, and knew I would be sad when it was finally over. So I didn't mind taking my time a bit.

And then, yesterday, I finished it. I finally finished the epic tale of the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry Potter, as he navigated seven years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, as he fought the evil Lord Voldemort and grew from boyhood into a man. And what an epic journey it has been! The last book, The Deathly Hallows, was so good I want to re-read it right away! But I'm going to give myself some space and time, and then maybe even start from the beginning, from the Sorcerer's Stone, and travel with Harry through all his adventures once again.

Not only has J.K. Rowling woven a brilliant story of good vs. evil, she did it in a supremely imaginative way. If you haven't read any of the books, I urge you to do so. Even if you've seen the movies, you will find yourself easily lost in the world of Hogwarts, Quidditch, and wizardry. And as with all books-made-into-movies, the written version is so much fuller and better.

The final book details Harry, Ron and Hermione's quest to finally destroy Voldemort. I won't give it away, but I might say this book is my favorite of them all. It could be because it finally brings closure to these characters' lives, these characters we've all come to know and love over the years. But I think she also wraps the story in exactly the perfect way. Harry's tale couldn't have ended more appropriately, poignantly, or powerfully. He proves himself the hero we've all hoped he would become.

I know I'm gushing a little much over a fictional story, but what can I say? Rowling is an amazing author, drawing you into her stories as though they WERE your friends and family. And though the books have come to an end, I still look forward to the last two movies. Who's with me on opening night?!