Wow, look at all the links!

Sometimes you have the kind of weekend where so much happens that it’s nearly impossible to condense into a bloggable, bite-sized nugget without it sounding like play-by-play commentary on ESPN. And then you think, Maybe I’ll just blog about how my husband nearly burned the house down today by accidentally nuking a shitty microwave burrito for ELEVEN MINUTES and the stink will never wash off you, not even after 35,495 showers in purified water and bleach, and the dog was sneezing and rubbing her nose all over the carpet and your furniture will now and forever smell like a charcoal sphincter and your nose hairs have petitioned the Body at Large for a change of address, they are so wounded.

But then, you have a change of heart. You should write about the weekend, because you had FUN. You want to capture the moment for posterity.

So Friday night I hung out with my fellow Deb, the all-around lovely, gracious, and amazing Gail Konop Baker. We attended the Wisconsin Book Festival to see T.C. Boyle read on Friday, and then all sorts of martini-fueled hijinks ensued, which Gail very eloquently wrote about here.

(Okay, I’m making it sound more exciting than it was. But to me? Curl-up-with-a-good-book-and-tea-on-a-Friday-night Girl? Who will use her prosaic powers only for beige-colored good? It was like being strapped to the most dangerous, condemned ride in the history of amusement parks, and the carnie just broke the lever off in “Neck-snapping whiplash” position. It rocked.)

Note to all drunken young people: YES! People have in fact told me I look exactly like Tina Fey. But, now listen—and this is important: I am not her, or I’d be in New York, rolling around on a bed of money, tossing off jokes to my entourage of laughing, sycophantic, bare-chested young men/errand boys as they scurry behind me from party to party. *sigh* I love her...

Saturday Gail and I got to see Alan Weisman’s talk on his book The World Without Us, and THEN (this is the exciting part) Gail and I got to have lunch with him! He was so truly cool and down-to-earth. And SMART. I was a bit goggle-eyed in his presence. I have only recently begun to actually email my favorite authors to tell them how much I adore their books, so having lunch with such a talented, amazing writer … (well, see the part above about the carnie and the broken lever).

And then today? I saw my first potential cover design for Driving Sideways. I can’t share it yet, because it may be tweaked here and there, but…I’m happy.

More to come...