A special weekend event!

You know that nice lady that wrote this book?

I was lucky enough to meet her.  What a fun day!

I knew there would be a good turn out.  Our city had not made her last book tour and she is quite popular with the folks I know.  I looked forward to meeting new people, fellow bloggers, photography buffs and foodies.  The bookstore used a color card method for the line, so you didn't have to stand in line until your color was next.  This worked out well.  I was able to get a drink and hang in the cafe people watching.  Here's what transpired through the hours I was there.

First, I ordered a hot tea, because although it was a sunny day, we hadn't been able to keep the 60 degrees from earlier in the week.  The tween working the counter asked if I wanted to add a shot of espresso to my tea.  Huh, what?  Why would I want to ruin good tea like that? No thanks.  She didn't seem to understand my horror at her question.  I grabbed a small table with my back to the wall and facing the ever increasing number of people.  I had already purchased my book and gotten my color-coded card, so I was good for a while.  There were college students working on their laptops, friends with the books waiting like me, and other bookstore patrons who hadn't anticipated quite that many people on a Saturday.  Guess they missed the monster "book signing" signs out front.  

After about 20 minutes a woman sat down at the adjacent table with wedding planning books.  Then, a cute young couple joined her to chat about their wedding. She was the planner and by golly she was going to plan.  I can't tell you how many times they said "simple, short" and how many times she wanted to plug in just one more thing.  Finally, after what felt to me like an excruciating amount of time, they got her to see simple and short and went on their way.  

Next, a mother and her adult daughter sat down.  The daughter mentioned, a few times, how she had told her mother they should have come earlier.  They had already sold out of the PW recipe book (really B&N, really?) and the mother had wanted one.  So, they got out the iPhone app and reserved a book at another location.  Dad, being the fantastic guy that he was drove to the next location, bought the book and brought it back for the signing.  What a guy.  Everyone was happy, well except maybe Dad who realized it would still be a couple hours before they reached the front of the line.

I asked a few folks if they wanted to join me on my day at the bookstore for the signing.  My friend Abbie came along for the fun - well, after she escaped work in the afternoon.  About 4 ladies sat down on the other side of our table in the cafe section.  They had their stack of books and their colored cards, they were 2 groups ahead of us.  We were estimating how long until we stood in line, chatting about the other folks in the store, joking about our current addiction to Angry Birds (an app for smartphones and ipads), and commenting on the nice selection of cameras around the joint.  Of course I had lugged my Nikon to the event, but then again, I do that a lot.  About 30 minutes after they got in line, we saw the nice 4 ladies again.  They waved as they went by us, still sitting in the cafe.

A couple interesting observations, if you didn't know if was a PW book signing, you might have mistakenly thought it was a Vera Bradley convention.  I am not kidding, they were everywhere.  All colors, sizes, styles, it was better that looking online and trying to decide what you wanted.  There they were, in living color.  Also, but completely unrelated, there was a small group of Amish women.  Hmm, I'm not really sure how blogging fits into the Amish lifestyle.  The only thing we could think of (because of course we chatted about it at the table) was that some PW recipes are very home style and could definitely fit into Amish life.

 I'm so glad Pioneer Woman could make it out our way (and that the weather was on our side, it's a toss up in February).  Great times had by all. 

Until next time!

M.E.