Only two waitresses today at the restaurant, A and me, so I opened up by myself for the most part. Just as I was dragging the heavy wooden noticeboard out onto the footpath outside the restaurant, preparing to turn on the "OPEN" sign, an SUV pulled up, and a couple of people walked in. They turned out to be the first of a three-hour lunch rush, which lasted steadily into the afternoon, and picked up again even after a lull.
Now the words "three-hour lunch rush" sound innocent enough in themselves, like some nice little ditty, comparable to Gilligan's Island's "three hour tour." However, when there are only two waitresses and three cooks, the lunch rush becomes a hurricane that practically demolishes the restaurant. Codes of conduct such as "Set the customers' table before bringing out their food," "Check back with the customers a couple of times during the meal," and "Ensure that drinks are filled at all times," are swept away with the flotsam and jetsam of empty straw wrappers, dirty plates, and soiled napkins.

(I hope, dear reader, that you are not taking this overblown rhetoric completely seriously.)

And so we were very nearly literally run off our feet today for a large portion of the shift. A party of ten and a party of seven came in at almost exactly the same time; meanwhile, the booths were filling rapidly, and the phone was ringing incessantly with take-out orders to be processed. Someone had spilled lettuce and tomatoes in the kitchen walkway, and the ice bin was practically empty.

A and I raced around, run, run, run, with trays of drinks and plates of food, trying to keep everyone happy. After, since A and I were the only ones working, we had to split the cleaning, so I worked until four o'clock cloroxing tables, refilling sugar boxes, etc. At four o'clock, I drove downtown to meet Sarah, Rachel, and Laura, who wanted to ice skate on the temporary rink that has been set up in a side street next to the old Katz building.

The rink was fairly busy. A fringe of children stumbled and crashed and giggled along periphery. Teens and adults skated confidently around the centre. An Asian man was helping his wee daughter learn how to skate; a couple of girls were clinging to each other, laughing; one wee boy kept crashing into the bit of wall adjacent to me. Every so often, Sarah, Rachel, and Laura would stop in their mad careen (hardly!) and shout to me across the racket of Christmas carols being played from a cheap speaker system.

After tea, Philip came home at about half six. Laura and I took Moochy for a walk. The night was practically balmy by the standards of the past month. Stars were gorgeous. At home, Sarah had come over to watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Philip hasn't seen any of the Harry Potter films yet and wants to. I showered quickly, and then all of us except my father went upstairs. We set ourselves up in the schoolroom and settled down to watch the film.

I have a special affection for the Harry Potter films. They are to my college experience what The Lord of the Rings was to my highschool experience (though of course LOTR is far, far, far better). Since the time I was first introduced--thanks to Lottie's widescreen TV, Tara, Alisha, a basilisk, and a phoenix--I've been fascinated by the creatures especially. I also appreciate that Rowling's bad guys are truly bad and use the same language about power, manipulation, and the lack of right/wrong as do classical villains.

However, the first film also reminds me of all the things that annoy me about Harry Potter. The evil of the villains has no clear good to balance it. Harry's goodness is definitely exaggerated. Indeed, Rowling's muse seems to express itself in exaggeration--I am always disgusted by the Dursleys, not because they are disgusting necessarily but because they seem to me to be unnecessarily grotesque, like images in a carnival mirror. It also bothers me that the main "good" characters are repeatedly rewarded for transgressing. The sheer disrespect of the "good" characters calls into question their goodness and why they are so different from the bad characters. "The end justifies the means" appears to be be the moral of the story on a foundational level.

But all of this has been said before and can be argued for or against. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed watching the first one again and introducing Philip, Laura, and Stephen to the world and its inhabitants. In the middle, we took a break for family worship, then went back upstairs to finish it. I'd forgotten how long the first one is: it was after eleven o'clock before we were done. Sarah went home, and the rest of us went to bed.