GGB Reno’s August Harry Potter Brunch
A total of 12 Geek Girl Reno brunchettes met for our August meetup at another first-time location – Roundabout Grill in downtown Reno, just next to the iconic Reno arch. Vanessa knew it was a good geek location because the walls looked like Tetris 🙂
We had 2 first time attendees and one of the original co-founders – Katie, who mentioned that it may be GGB Reno’s first year anniversary, which we later found out was true! GGB Reno’s inaugural brunch was Harry Potter-themed too, so the new officers unwittingly mirrored the very first brunch, one year later. Geek girl minds are indeed great minds.
As each brunchette arrived, they wrote their name on a roll of parchment, and placed it in our “Boggart Box” for our raffle.
We then started off with introductions, talking about our biggest current fandom, relevant stories to HP, and what Hogwart’s house we belonged in. We tallied up the houses to see who dominated our brunch. While many of us talked briefly about our love for things like Star Wars, Star Trek, LOTR, “all things sci-fi,” fantasy, and even “anything with a female lead” (which got a group cheer!), Harry Potter turned out to be the #1 fandom of many of our brunchettes. Angela’s family tradition for years was going to see the new Harry Potter film in theaters. The first books Paola ever read in English were the first 4 HP books! Cate is currently reading the series to her young son, who already loves the LOTR books. Carolyn made everyone sniffle and go “awwwww” when she said, “Every time I see a meme about Snape I cry.” Sara may have been the biggest HP fan of all, as she admitted to having made a decent amount of money once off of writing HP fan fics!! She has been to HP Con in Chicago, loves StarKid (and has sung with Darren Criss!), and had one of the best quotes of the brunch – “Everyone thinks I’m a Gryffindor, which is why I’m a Slytherin.” Katie actually just got back from the summer in Singapore, where she read the Cursed Child. Tiffany mentioned Ilvermorny School, which many of the brunchettes did not know about – it’s the American School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and it has its own houses which you can be sorted into as well. Kate actually makes HP acceptance letters! After intros, the victorious house with the most brunchettes was Ravenclaw, but only by a half point, the other houses were well-represented.
We had 2 games for the ladies to play while we awaited our food. We came SO CLOSE to a blackout on our Harry Potter Bingo – we only missed 3 towards the end (many thanks to GGB Philadelphia, for posting the pdf of their game from a prior brunch!)! Thanks to Kayla for being our resident wand-carrier!
These are the lovely winners of the HP Boggart Box raffle!
The food arrived at the end of the raffle, and the ladies broke off into little groups at the table, discussing a variety of geeky topics. Other things we learned about during this month’s brunch were the YouTube show Adult Wednesday Addams, JK Rowling also writes crime novels under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, CJ is reading the first of the Gentleman Bastards book series, “The Lies of Locke Lamora,” (and starting a Geek club called The Guild at Truckee Meadows Community College), everyone seems to have a different favorite HP book (and least favorite – Vanessa just hates Chamber of Secrets, while Erin finds the first half of Goblet of Fire boring), we all agree cosplaying should be fun, open to anyone, and non-judgmental, and also – Paola ships Ginny and Draco!
Every one of us loves having the chance to geek out with each other. We all look forward to September’s brunch!