What's Quidditch Without a Little Rain?

This past Saturday, I dragged myself out of bed at 8:30am. I had a hard-boiled egg for breakfast and checked my email. I glanced outside and lamented the gray skies, and then lamented the gray skies even more when I saw that the weather was calling for rain off-and-on the entire day. I threw on sweatpants, my HPA Accio Books tshirt, a pair of old tennis shoes, and a raincoat. I packed a bag with a couple of books, a notebook, wallet, iPod, phone, camera, and a bottle of water. I found my roommate Kathleen downstairs, we grabbed an umbrella and our other roommate's OSU parking pass she lent us for the day, and jumped in the car. We drove 15 minutes down to OSU's west campus, got confused while trying to find where to park, and then lamented the gray skies some more as we walked to Beekman Park.

And then we spent the next several hours watching Quidditch.

You really shouldn't be surprised. I mean, I am easily the nerdiest Flurrier.

Yes, folks. The game played by Harry Potter and company while flying on broomsticks is a real sport. A real, legit sport, where players get injured frequently and have to be escorted off the field by the sports medicine people. Played by colleges such as Ohio State and Carnegie-Mellon and Virgina Tech. It's even got a nonprofit organization running the leagues (The International Quidditch Association) and each November there's a World Cup that draws thousands of fans. It's even going to have an exhibition at this summer's Olympics, with teams representing the USA, the UK, Canada, and possibly more.

And I finally got to see it played on Saturday at the second annual Ohio Cup, held by OSU, which drew twelve Quidditch teams from all over the midwest.



For the most part, the game is very much like what you read about in the Harry Potter books, minus the flying, obviously. Each team has seven players in action at a time, all of whom run around with makeshift brooms between their legs. The chasers are trying to score goals with the "quaffle" (in this case, a slightly deflated volleyball) through three tall hoops at each end of the playing field. The beaters are running around, hitting people with the "bludgers" (in this case, slightly deflated dodgeballs), in order to knock them "out" and force them to abandon play and run back to their team's goal hoops before joining the game again. The keepers are busy trying to keep the other team from scoring and the seekers are busy trying to catch the snitch...which is a person dressed all in yellow who has a tennis ball in a sock hanging out of the back of their shorts. The game can only end when the snitch is caught...and in the "Muggle" version of Quidditch, the snitch is only worth 30 points (rather than 150), to give the team that doesn't catch it at least a fighting chance.

It's basically soccer meets dodgeball meets flag football...meets antics, because the snitch runner has no rules. The snitch runner is allowed to do whatever and go wherever he or she wants in order to keep the seekers from getting that tennis ball. We saw snitch runners gang up against seekers with water pistols and nerf guns. We saw one snitch runner don an incognito costume of a hat, a beard, and a vest, and then climb a fence to stand on top of a baseball dugout roof. Seekers were wrestled to the ground, the backs of their brooms gripped by snitch runners...they were pelted by pinecones, they were forced to run miles trying to catch the snitch, they were pushed down hills repeatedly.

It was possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen. And I got really into it.

The fun was cut a little short after a group of us watched OSU win their last regular match of the day, which was about the time we decided it was far too cold and far too rainy and we escaped to Starbucks. Not that it mattered, really...the tournament ended up being cancelled due to weather about an hour later anyway, so we didn't miss too much. But would I go again? In a heartbeat. It was the best way to spend my Saturday, even with the rain.

I even got hit by a rogue bludger.

What I Did Over My Summer Vacation

Remember how sometimes teachers would assign that ridiculous essay asking what you did over your summer vacation? Our little Fiction Flurry hiatus felt a lot like a summer vacation to me. I feel like telling you what I did.

1. I turned 24. And while I'm still the "young'un" of the group, it feels old to me. I keep thinking there's NO WAY I'm 24. And, yet, I am.

2. I celebrated 4th of July with my friends the only way we seem to know how--going to downtown Columbus for Red, White, and BOOM and hanging out with the million other people who do the same. There were some drunk teenagers on our bus on the way into the city. One girl puked in her own purse. It's moments like that when I ask myself why I love RWB so much, but I do.

3. I helped run Portkey, which was a special online conference of sorts that the Harry Potter Alliance staff put on during LeakyCon, which was the BIG Harry Potter convention that was down in Orlando, FL this year. I headed up Gryffindor house for the house cup and Livestreamed a lot. We gained fans. It was...surreal.


4. I nerded out over the last Harry Potter movie, re-read all the books, held a two-day "Potterpalooza" with my friends (where we marathon-watched all the Harry Potter movies), and then I dressed in costume and went to the midnight premiere of the last movie. I cried. But my costume was AWESOME.

5. I went to a couple of concerts, all indie artists. One was in Cleveland, to see a few "nerd bands" as you might call them--Alex Carpenter, Jason Munday, Christian Caldeira, and Mike Lombardo. They're all YouTube musicians, three are/were in wizard rock bands, and I fangirled with the best of them. The second concert was Harry and the Potters. Judge away.

5. I moved out of my parents' house, and into an apartment with my friend Tracy (whom I've known since kindergarten) and my friend Kathleen (who was my roommate for four years in college). We have yet to kill each other, so I count it a success. I finally finished unpacking my room this weekend.

6. I watched an obscene amount of NCIS, after stocking up on all the seasons on DVD. I'm currently on season 8 and trying to see if I can catch up before the season 9 premiere on Tuesday.

7. I kept Livestreaming with Portkey, but not as a conference. We decided to keep the fun alive, and somehow I found myself as a regular host. On the night of July 30/July 31, we spontaneously decided to pull an all-nighter to try to get into the beta of Pottermore with the first clue posted in the "Magical Quill Challenge." Ten. Hour. Livestream. I went to bed as the sun was coming up.

8. I started beta testing Pottermore...getting access to the site one week after access started. That was a painful week to wait. And then I had a slight identity crisis as I got sorted into Ravenclaw, as opposed to Gryffindor. And then I got over it. Now...dude, I'm a Ravenclaw and don't know how I didn't see it before. Since getting access...I've successfully brewed a handful of potions and successfully exploded two cauldrons (and I still have no idea why).

9. I started re-reading the Harry Potter books. Again. After buying a third set of the books to mark up, highlight, and write in the margins to my heart's content. Now, let's be fair. I'm reading it through this time much slower...mostly only at night, before bed. But it's still fun to have a set of Potter books that I'm allowing myself to mark all over.


10. I danced at the Dublin Irish Festival, as I have done since I took up Irish dancing two years ago. I won five medals in the dance competition. And then, recently, we lost our dance teacher to cancer. It's been strange starting the new dance year without her there.

11. I went to the Ohio Renaissance Festival with my friends for the first time in about five years. I bought a quill, a leather journal, and a jar that says "Floo Powder," because I can't go anywhere without buying something nerdy (at the Irish Festival, I bought a Deathly Hallows symbol...and if you know what I'm talking about, you get extra points in my book).

12. I finished my third draft on my novel. Then I bought myself a HUGE cup of frozen yogurt, with WAY too many topics at Menchie's.

13. I went to the 20th Anniversary Homecoming game for my high school, and marched in the alumni band with people who represented 16 of the 20 graduating classes from the school. It was amazing and fun and stressed me out to no end, because I somehow found myself in charge of organizing it.

In summary, I did many, many geeky things and had many, many adventures. And now it's the fall, and I'm getting ready to send out my novel to literary agents, and I'm counting down to NaNoWriMo, and I'm still doing Livestreams with Portkey, and I continue to work with the HPA. I've also become a writer for the Potter Games, a choose your own adventure style online game, and I've made amazing friends over at an RPG called Magic is Might Continues, which has become a great writing exercise for me and entertains me to no end. Yes, I've fallen even more into the Potter fandom, and I'm okay with that, and I continue to learn more about my own writing. It's been an amazing summer, but I'm ready for the fall and the new adventures that will bring.

So what did all of YOU do during the "summer vacation"?