I just finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. For some reason, the publisher chose to give away the climax of the story in the dust cover illustration, although it does leave a few questions unanswered so as not to make it too obvious:

• Is Voldemort falling backwards or just hovering mysteriously?
• Why doesn’t he have a wand?
• Potter appears about to catch something out of the air. What could it be?

My son’s hockey team didn’t do so well at NARCh this time around. They got knocked out in the round-robin portion of the tournament.

That left us with some extra time on our hands, some of which we used to drive up to Tampa to watch the Angels get worked by the ordinarily hapless Devil Rays, 7-2.

We got good seats though! — right behind home plate about 10 rows up.

Completing the hat trick of futility, I arrived back in California to find that the mortgage bank I worked for had laid off 400 people, including me.

The good news is that I did get a severance package, unlike the last time I got laid off (from a dot-com company), when all I got was a handshake and an escort to the parking lot.

Oh, and I’ve got more time to read the last Harry Potter book. I’m really sick of Harry Potter but I do want to find out how the whole thing wraps up . . .

The Nets have new uniforms. See, it says ‘New Jersey’ right on the front.

On Nets guard Lucious Harris shooting 2-for-23: “They’d be better off having Lucious Malfoy [a wizard in the Harry Potter books]. He could point his wand at the ball and make it go in the basket.