Man, I stood in line for hours today.
First was the whole post office thing. Then I showed up for the booksigning at about 6:30 only to be told that they sold out of books. I decided that I wasn’t going to stand in line forever just to get a signed bookplate, so I was just about to leave when I ran into Alton Brown himself. He seemed a little miffed that the store had run out of books. At that point I decided, in for a dime, in for a dollar, so I raced to another bookstore a few miles away to pick up 2 books, one for me and one for my friend. They only had one. Oy. I bought it, mentally debated whether to go back to bookstore #1 again and hear the talk and stand in line, and the masochist inside said to go back, which I did.
Stupidly, I had not taken a number when I went to bookstore #1 the first time. Well, perhaps not so stupidly, since the number droid downstairs told me I didn’t need one. I picked one up – E77. Alton Brown talked for about an hour, then they started calling people in groups to stand in line. Starting with C25. Which meant there were 250 numbers in front of mine. And being the nice guy that he is, Alton signed anything and everything people brought up (including an Emeril cookbook which he signed as “Emeril – BAM!”) and posed for pictures and stuff.
2 hours later I got up to the table. I told him that I didn’t want a picture since I didn’t bring a camera, but I asked him to please talk to my husband on the phone
(pause blogging at this point to have a heart attack when we discover that the 9 month old has climbed an entire flight of stairs and is roaming around the dining room, within the 10 second space that we didn’t have an eye on her, pant pant)
and thank him for babysitting. He said to get hub on the phone, so I called and it rang and rang and I figured hub was helping #1 daughter go potty, but he eventually answered and I said hey, hold on a second (while nice Alton Brown was smiling expectantly, waiting to talk on the phone, and the line people were getting disgruntled).
His response was no, I can’t talk, I’m on the other line with my mother.
Exasperation. I said no, hold on a second! and handed off the phone. Hub and Alton chit-chatted for 5 minutes or so, with Alton chastising him for letting the girls stay up so late. And he really dug my phone. And he’s the second celeb who told me that I have a beautiful name.
As an interesting sidenote, there were these total geeks sitting behind me who were loudly and ostentatiously discussing how they were logging on to the internet on their cell phones. I thought to myself, ooooohh, a dick size contest! and whipped out my i300 and proceeded to log on to AOL Instant Messenger and chat with hub. At which point said geeks became silent with awe and slunk away.
I rule.