The pre-travel eating has begun.

When I’m on vacation or especially in an airport, it’s like I think calories don’t count. Though I hate flying, I LOVE airport food and all the choices you have. And when my layover is mere minutes, I get STRESSED that I can’t stop and eat. Last year I had a millisecond to get to my connecting flight, and this of course, intersected with the time most people would’ve been eating lunch. I didn’t get to eat for eleven hours straight! It was TORTURE!! Well, okay, I was loaded load with my vast array of plane snacks, but it’s not the same. At lunchtime you want real food, not Tropical Starbursts. So in order to prepare for all this eating, I’m practicing. Just had a salad, a Diet Dr. Pepper, and a Twix. I know for a fact that two diet products cancel out a single bad food. For dinner I will have a Lean Cuisine, Crystal Lite, and some Chunky Monkey.

I have decided to read Harry Potter No. 201. Okay, I guess it’s seven; I haven’t really been keeping up in the last few years. I wasn’t going to read it, but not too many people are talking about the ending and who gets killed off, so…sigh…I have to read it. I have two students who refuse to tell me who dies, even though I have threatened to go back and retroactively change their grades. They’re not talking. And THEN one of them has the AUDACITY to say something like, “Um, I don’t know how it ends, but I’m going to find out. By READING it. You might try it.” Sometimes students put on this front of being good human beings the entire semester you have them. But now their true colors have shown through. Duly noted, students. Duly noted.

So just for that, since I know one of them has yet to read it, I’m going to give away some Harry Potter spoilers. Read on…if you dare.

1. The true identity of Voldemort is revealed. It’s Lindsay Lohan. I did not see that coming.

2. Hermione leaves mid-way through the book (that would be at page 2,109,193, 000) to join a convent.

3. The seventh book is done entirely in couplets. And yes, it is hard to find something that rhymes with “I blew something up again today” or "This broom really chafes."

4. Harry is recruited by David Beckham to train him in Quidditch. And by the way, Quidditch roughly translates into “sport that would require a lot of wires if this book were a musical.” The end of the book will make you tear up as Harry saves the day and convinces muggle Posh Spice to eat a Big Mac.

5. Turns out the cloak of invisibility was just a big joke all along, as Ashton Kutcher reveals to a sobbing Harry on an episode of Punk’d in chapter thirty-one. That will teach Harry to peek in on the girls’ dorm.

6. Donald Trump buys Hogwarts and enforces mandatory comb-overs for everyone.

That's all I know so far. But don't worry. While these spoilers are oh-so-revealing, they only cover a small percentage of the book. There are still millions of pages in The Deathly Hallows that I didn't address. Like the chapters where Harry enlists the help of 50 Cent and goes all gangsta. Those were powerful scenes.

Okay, back to painting and eating and making lists of things I know I'm going to forget for this trip.