Throwback Thursdays: Dear Mr. Potter...

It's been over two years since I spent an evening in a Spanish-language movie theater in Sevilla, crying over Harry Potter y las Reliquias de Muerte (Parte 2) and the fact that after twelve years of my life, the series was finally over. The Harry Potter series was and always will be my favorite series of books and movies, and it was such a huge part of my life growing up. Instead of writing an entirely new blog post about it, though, I decided that I would share my Dear Mr. Potter letter, which I wrote two days before the final movie came out.

Trying to get onto Platform 9 and 3/4 at King's Cross Station in London, Summer 2007.

For those of you who don't know, Dear Mr. Potter is a project run through the Harry Potter Alliance that collected letters to Harry about how the series changed their lives. So many people wrote letters, including other authors and actress Evanna Lynch, who plays Luna in the movies, and many of them were eventually compiled into a book. I wrote mine more for myself than anyone else, as a way to try and put into words what the series actually meant to me. I haven't really shared it because I was really emotional while writing it, but two years after the fact... I'm actually still emotional about it, but whatever. I hope you all enjoy reading it.

Throwback Thursdays - Summer League Swimming

One of the trends on Instagram is to post a "throwback" picture every Thursday for "Throwback Thursday" (#tbt). Since my past is actually more exciting than my present, at least when it comes to things to blog about, I'm going to try and write Throwback Thursday posts every week about things I used to love, stories from back in the day, etc. And, of course, a potentially embarrassing old picture.

In 2000, my local neighborhood pool formed a summer swim team. I joined with a few of my friends and thus began my (not-very illustrious) competitive swimming career. I went into the beginning of the season only knowing how to do freestyle, but by the end of the summer I was doing the 100 IM at meets, and I was hooked on swimming.

My team picture from 2002, back in the days when I used way too much Sun-In