December 22, 2002

[I dreamed I was in a castle.] I also dreamed that my brother was dating a pig. She looked, smelled, and sounded like a woman, but I knew she was a transfigured pig. I talked to her as we walked through [an outdoor fair]. She told me she had 10 piglets, 4 of whom were in college....

Then there's the episode [in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland] with Alice and the Duchess's baby, with the baby turning into a pig. Oh, and Circe turned Odysseus's men into pigs. Homer Simpson/Odysseus ate the pig that used to be Lenny. But those are both human-to-pig transformations, not the other way around. Same deal Hagrid's threat to turn Dudley Dursley into a pig. Come to think of it, I may have been thinking about Harry Potter. That castle was a bit like Hogwarts....

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3.Harry_Potter_and_the_Sorcerer_s_Stone

At five we opened our presents to each other. "Mr. Elingtin" gave me a new thermal coffee mug, a Harry Potter DVD, and the Independence Day DVD. Cool stuff. But all I really wanted for Hanukkah/Christmas/Winter Solstice was "Mr. Elingtin's" continued health. That's all I want for the next 70 years. I love my sweet, sweet honey boy. I only want good things to happen to him.

We put Harry Potter in the DVD player [and] watched the movie. This time I noticed how different the beginning is from the first 2 or 3 chapters of the book. Then I played with the interactive DVD extras. They're fun; you'll have to get past Fluffy, pick the right flying key, mix potions, and select the right bottle to get to the sorceror's stone. There are also guided tours of Hogwarts, interviews, and deleted scenes from the movie.

Among the deleted scenes were 1) Aunt Petunia finding letters inside egg shells, 2) Dudley in his Smeltings uniform, and 3) a longer scene showing Harry's first Potions class, almost exactly like it is in Rowling's book. I really enjoyed those extra scenes.