This is my 15 minutes of down time during this sub assignment. Don't know if you got my text earlier this morning but I'm at the alternative highschool today. These teachers don't have plan time (???) but normally, I don't have computer access at all, so I'll take the trade. I'm having a bit of a hard time here, with the lack of structure, rules, schedules and general supervision, but the lack of attendance is kind of making up for it all. OMG, I could never do this as a permanent job; in fact, I'm pretty sure I'm crossing it off my Preferences list as soon as I can.
Anyhoo....as you can probably imagine, I had an awesome weekend. Friday night we had E&L over for dinner, which turned out to be pretty fun after all. I don't think we'll become close friends or anything like that, but I wouldn't mind doing dinner with them every now and then. Saturday, everyone was up early for JJ's baseball game. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful, so we sat around in t-shirts with coffee, jawjacking with all the other parents. And,
I left straight from there for Borders, only to get major drama from my SIL on the phone on the way there. More on that later (lots more - and for a phone coversation) but for now, suffice to say she haunted me the entire day, up to the very end of the party at midnight. My bro never showed up at all.
JA, the other woman who was helping me put this whole thing together, and her husband JO, met me at Borders and we got all the stuff set up for the reading. It didn't start until 2:00 but well before 1:00 people were starting to show up. Working with the rep from Borders, JA and I assigned ourselves "jobs" for the afternoon and set about doing them as soon as we realized it was going to be utter chaos if we didn't start early. Kim waited for 2:00 to begin the reading, but she was signing books from 1:30 until 5:30, without a single break.
Oh look! This class is going to watch a movie so I can stay right here!
JA and I traded back and forth handing out swag, checking name spellings, answering questions, basically just making sure people had paid for books, had their little name sticky in the front cover, bla, bla bla. One of our neighbors had copied the jacket cover and had t-shirts designed at a local print shop. We thought they'd sell a dozen or so, to people like us and Kim's mom. As it turned out, they sold over 70 shirts, and I'm pretty sure all of those people were at the signing. That was cool...seeing so many people who were that supportive. Four or five people were taking photographs (including whackjob CC) and a lot of the crowd was friends and family and/or friends of friends and family, so it was actually very intimate as far as book signings go. (I haven't seen the pictures yet, but I will forward them as soon as I can...I really want to share!!)
I would guess there were 230 people there, at least, and the bookstore said they sold over 190 copies of the book. Many people had already purchased it, and there were several people with multiple copies, so we kind of lost track on the numbers. By 5:00 Kim was down to signing store copies (30! I thought her hand was going to fall off) so JA and I left to go set up at the restaurant.
JA, JO and I met up there and downed Coronas in about 5 seconds flat, immediately ordering more to beat the rush :) We put up all the balloons, banners, posters and such, then enjoyed our second (third?) beer with our remaining 10 minutes of free time before everyone started to mill in.
The party was fantastic - everything went perfectly. It was adults only, so it was nice not to have to keep an eye on any little ones (although JJ had a job all day, which was more or less babysitting Kim's daughter at the signing, and he did a stellar job.) We ordered a bunch of appetizer platters and everyone had their own bar tab; it worked out really well. JA and I ended up kind of mingling around so I didn't really settle in with my BLU gang for too long, but I had an absolute blast. More importantly, Kim and Josh pretty much had the night of their lives. We didn't get home until midnight, at which point I totally passed out, but J, C and the BLUers stayed up drinking in our living room until god knows when.
I think the whole thing was a terrific success - everything Kim had hoped for and then some. I wasn't even the starring author and I won't soon forget the day.
Sunday I only moved once - from my couch to S&T's couch. I sat there most of the day drinking beer & tomato juice (hello! Where's that combo been all my life??) then finally went home to make dinner and get to bed early last night.
So that was my weekend. How about you? I'm not working tomorrow (Tuesday) and have a long drive home from the city at around 2:00, my time. Will you be around? I'd love to catch up on the phone.
My class period is ending and I only have two more to go before I head home to get JJ ready for his game tonight. Hasn't been too bad a day after all.
Love you!
A
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