And Now For Something Completely Different

This is a postscript to that post about the weird Hogwarts dream I had earlier.

When I thought about it, I came up with an invention of sorts. I bet somebody else in Harry Potter fandom has already come up with it, so I doubt I'm stealing anybody's thunder.

It's a parody of the 1920s "Tommy Gun". How it works: you slip your wand into the space on the "gun" where the breech would be on a real Tommy, and then you'd speak your spell into the magazine. The magazine would multiply your spell by fifty, and then you'd fit the magazine to the underside of the "gun". Flip off the safety, and you're ready to cast.

Because of its construction material, it's called a Chicago Woodwind. :)

If something like this is really in any of the post-movies books, then I plead ignorance. As said, I haven't read any of the books. Nor do I read fanfic. *shrug*

FP

Postscript to a Story I Haven't Told Yet

This is about my Number Two car.

It was a Toyota Tercel four-door sedan, with silver paint. When the transmission failed on my AMC Concord station wagon and was replaced (circa 1989), the replacement trans on it was no improvement and I lost trust in it. So the Concord was passed on to my brother, and the Tercel was acquired to replace the Concord. The previous owner of the Tercel was a high school classmate of mine named Anton. In hindsight, I should have nicknamed the car the Anton-Martin, as at one time, my college parking permit number was 007. But I never thought of it.

I forget how long I had the Tercel. It served me till my mother lost her driver's license (she flunked an eyesight test and that led to her getting Lasic surgery) and so I could take over driving her car...and my brother eventually came to the same conclusion on the Concord I had, and took over the Tercel as his car.

Cars like the Tercel are perfect for towns like Asheville. When brother bought his next car, the Tercel was passed to one of his friends. And it continued to get passed around, from buddy to buddy.

My bro and a buddy of his visited us yesterday. I was told that the Tercel finally fell apart recently. Somebody noticed an oil leak, took it to a shop, and when they washed the underside they found that the dirt was the only thing holding the axle together.

I'm glad that a car I owned 15 years ago lasted that long, but I also am taking heed that regular maintenance is more than just getting the oil changed every X000 miles.

FP