Wednesday: It Begins

You would think I would know by now NOT to schedule early morning breakfasts. But I did-for both Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday was at IKEA. I’d never been, but I’d heard of it, and when my buddies C.J. Lyons and Staci Wallace emailed me to see if we could do IKEA, I said, sure. Laura also wanted to go when I mentioned I was going, so we met up in the lobby. The only trouble-I’d never met C.J. (Staci was meeting us there), so I really had no idea what she looked like, and people never look like their website pics. Finally, we found her-got in the car, and headed off. We got there shortly before opening, and wow… tons of people were already eager to get in. We got there, had breakfast (yummy stuff, only 99 cents), then hit the store.

Um… what to say… they had tons of way cool stuff. I seriously could have bought an entire houseful, it was so cool. I did find some good buys, picked up a few trinkets, and when it came time to take a group shot, realized the memory card on my camera was shot. Thankfully someone (Laura, maybe? Please?) had a camera and took one of us. Which was good, because other than passing C.J. in the hallway, I never saw them again.

Got back to the hotel, had every intention of taking a nap, but ended up checking the boards (see, I DO work when out of town), and then I needed to get a new memory card, so Dana and I headed out for the mall. Dana needed candy to hand out at the lit signing, so we hit the candy store, I bought my girlies gifts. Then we went to the camera store, I got my memory card, and my phone rang. It was Sapphire! Aka our other roomie and her friend.

We headed back to the hotel, got the girls checked in, and headed to the room. Sapphire (aka Joanne) is another host, and her friend Angela was there for the ride. I knew Jo, but I’d never met Angela before. Angela is a hoot. We had a ton of fun. Truly, if you’re going to stick four women in a hotel room together, the four of us could not have been a better match.

Then it was off to our hosty dinner, where we met up with Jayne, Jeanette (one of the bookstore people), Dee, and Tanya. My meal sounded yummy, but it was rather spicy, so I didn’t end up eating much of it.

Afterwards, we went to the booksigning. Now, some of you know how we refer to Barnes and Noble as my mothership. However, let me just say that um, no. It is not even close to the blissful high I get being in a room with five hundred authors signing books. *satisfied sigh* But, because I’m broke and trying to be a good girl, I only spent about $75. World record for me, since I always spend about twice that. I’m not even going to attempt to list everyone I saw at the lit signing, because were too many. I think I stopped every two feet for a hug.

After, I met up with my crew (Dana, Jo, and Ang), chatted a bit, met up with Latesha from the boards, and she and I went to a gathering Jane Porter was having with folks from her list at Trader Vic’s. Again, had a very nice time, got to chat with folks. Had my first Mai Tai. Actually, it was only a couple of sips, because it was so strong, I thought I was going to die. That dinner was also very spicy, but I did eat most of it, because once the spice wore off, it was really tasty. After dinner, I went up to hang out with Catherine Mann, Joanne Rock, and Dianna Love Snell. The crew called and joined us, which was fun. Cathy and Joanne are probably two of my favorite people, so I was sad I didn’t get to spend more time with them.

Went back to our room, tried to go to bed, but sadly, it was like being at a slumber party, we up way too late giggling over silly stuff.