Thursday: Christ, what happened on Thursday?

Thursday: Christ, what happened on Thursday?

Thursday morning I got an extra interview. Bonus interview, yay! :) And, in fact, there’s a copy of that interview here. To my delight, I actually think it sounds pretty good! (It’s a big file, 5 megs, but the link isn’t to it directly).

I think I had vague plans to go back to sleep after the interview, but because it was at such a reasonable hour (8am!) I just stayed up. I was going to go shopping, but I got drawn into reading Gail’s THE COMPASS ROSE, so I spent most of the morning in my hotel room curled up with a book, which was really awfully nice.

Once I was done reading, I went down to the Borders and found they had three copies of my book in, so I signed them and went away very pleased. The pen ran out on the second book (I was having the *worst* luck with pens!) and so I wrote “Oops! The pen ran out!” and re-signed it, which amused the snot out of me. :)

Wandered around Pike Place Market, discovering why I think Seattle isn’t hilly–Pike and Pine are the two streets I’m usually on when I’m in Seattle, and they’re relatively flat. It’s the streets on either side of them that suddenly go zooming up like a miniature San Francisco. But now I have learned, and next time I go to Seattle I won’t be surprised that it’s all hilly. :)

Got checked out of the hotel around 2pm so I could go do a major downgrade by checking into the Quality Inn Suites. :) But as I was in the process of checking in, Rill came down the stairs, so I yelled gleefully and got hugs, which was an excellent way to begin the remainder of the week!

I actually spent most of Thursday hanging out. I’d been going to have dinner with my cousin Alanna, but she had to work, so I hung about, caught up with Liz Wolfe, greeted Karen (who spent all weekend saying, “There’s the invisible guest!” when she saw me), was descended upon by Emily, Emily’s friend Scott, and Scott’s wife and son Shannon and Michael, whom I had not met previously, as well as Chris Cooper, who’s the guy who’d bought my WW membership and who was *very* confused as to my presence there.

It turned out Emily, Scott, Shannon and Michael had GONE TO THE BORDERS I’D BEEN AT A FEW HOURS EARLIER AND BOUGHT ALL THREE COPIES OF MY BOOK THAT THEY HAD. *laugh* Evidently they’d been in a mall and saw someone reading a paper and there was a half-page ad for my book in it, and they went rushing over to the guy and excused themselves but please could he tell them what paper he was reading (I should find out and get copies myself) and then they got a copy of the paper and ran to Borders and Emily went to the information desk clutching the paper with the ad turned out and said, “Do you have this book?!?!” with terrible urgency, and the woman behind the counter said, “You’re so CUTE!!!” *laughs and laughs*

Of course, they only had three copies, so she came back and said the four of them were going to have to fight over it, but Shannon said that since two of the three copies were going to her house anyway, it was okay if she didn’t *actually* have a copy of her own. :) And Michael got the one the pen’d run out on, which he was terribly pleased about that. :) I re-signed all of them for them, and we decided perhaps we should move out of the line of traffic. Somewhere in there Jim and Shannon Butcher arrived, and we ended up all sitting around in one of the conference rooms just catching up and chatting and having a grand old time.

Now, because I wasn’t officially there for the weekend, I didn’t want to be eating the conference food or anything (all I’d paid for was the banquet Saturday night, which I ended up not going to anyway because it’d been sold out and I didn’t know until I got there that a few seats had come open, and by then I’d made other plans; but *anyway*, basically I was there for the booksigning), I went away for dinner, and as it happened I went away with Emily and Scott and Shannon and Michael and Chris. We went around the corner to a pizza place, where the waitress handled our silliness VERY WELL INDEED (she got an enormous tip), and there was a sax player across the street whose music was a wonderful accompaniment to dinner (he got all the cash we had left, I think).

And then in a fit of sheer sanity, I went back to the hotel and went to bed!