Day in the Life of an Idiot

For a report on the booksinging last night, check out Tate's blog: Booksigning Woes. Mason, in case you were wondering, was a complete angel. He managed to impress the other moms because he spent nearly the entire time with his nose pressed deep inside a book. (I LOVE having an early reader.)

The Northtown Mall in Blaine, where the signing was, is one of those places that the faeries routinely hide from me. I've had a signing at the Waldenbooks there since I first sold Archangel Protocol all those many years ago, and damned if I can ever drive right there. This times I was determined to not get lost, so we planned to leave early (an hour early, in fact,) and to have a printed Yahoo Map in hand. Well, best laid plans of mice and all that... right around 4:00 when we were getting ready to leave, I rememebered that I didn't know where I was going so I fired up the computer. I, of course, forgot that we have dial-up, so twenty minutes later the maps still hadn't completely materalized on the screen. In frustration I gave up and called the store. Emmi, the bookstore manager (and event planner), confessed to actually not knowing how to get from St. Paul to Blaine, which just made me laugh in utter and complete desperation.

Armed with what little Emmi could tell us, Mason and I took off in the direction of Blaine. I forgot, of course, that much of highway 280 and 35W North are under construction, so we got slowed to a crawl. Meanwhile, I'm watching the clock click closer and closer to 5:00 (show time!). We finally make it up to "speeds at posted" and...

... drive right there for the first time in my life. Many times people have talked of these mystical highway signs that actually point to Northtown Mall, but until last night, I'd never seen them.

Maybe Mason had some kind of spell to ward off the direction faeries, but it was almost surreal. Northtown Mall also has this weird entrance off the highway, which almost always ends up with me turning around in the Toys R Us parking lot, but this time I drove right to the door closest to the Waldenbooks. We arrived with five minutes to spare.

Mason thought the whole adventure was a great deal of fun. He kept counting down the clock for me with great glee. "Nine minutes, ima!" and then when we arrived he said, "We'd better run like the dickens, ima."

I have to say that I'm proud of myself for doing so well in Shawn's absence. I'm one of those people who sometimes gets a little weird when her partner isn't around. I talk to myself more, and get less done than I'd like to because I'm wandering around the house with a general "things aren't right" feeling. Yesterday was a little iffy at the beginning because half way to Mason's school, we had to turn around and go pick up his backpack, which I'd forgotten -- despite having set it on THE CHAIR on the porch (THE CHAIR is where everything that needs to go with us in the morning is set up.)

But in somewhat more distressing news, one of my tetra bit the big one last night. It was a complete shocker. I mean, I knew there were two tetra that were seperated from the herd, but they'd both been coming out regularly to eat, so I didn't think much of it. Just before we left for Northtown Mall last night, however, I checked on them (which I do often, because this is the tank in the bedroom), there was one poor fellah stuck to the filter grates. We gave him (her?) the traditional, "Gucci, gucci, you were a good fish" toilet farewell, and his/her death added to my general franticness about finding the Mall. Though perhaps her/his death was a sacrifice to the "travel gods" that my folks and I like to joke about. I hope not. Given how lost I've been in my own city lately, I could be up for a lot of fish loss.

Oh, yeah, and yesterday I delivered AngeLINK books to Dreamhaven and walked off with a boatload of titles, including one print anthology of post-apocalyptic stories for Shawn called WASTELAND. Here are the comics I bought, in no particular order (this, by the way, represents over $100 worth of comics):

SECRET INVASION: Who Do You Trust #1 (multi-author/illustrators)
SECRET INVASION: Avengers, The Initiative #14 (Slott/Gage)
SECRET INVASION: The Mighty Avengers #15 (Bendis/Romita, Jr., et al.)
SECRET INVASION: Ms. Marvel #28 (Reed/Melo)
SECRET INVASION: The New Avengers #42 (Bendis/Cheung)
SECRET INVASION: Runaaways/Young Avengers #1 of 3 (Yost/Miyazawa)
SECRET INVASION: Fantastic Four #2 of 3 (Aguirre-Sacasa/Kitson)
SECRET INVASION: The Incredible Hercules #118 (Pak/Van Lente)
SECRET INVASION: Captain Britian and MI13 #1 (Cornell/Kirk)

Plus, because I had store credit to burn, I rounded out my Civil War collection with...

CIVIL WAR: A Marvel Comics Event (Millar/McNiven, et al.)
CIVIL WAR: Frontline (Jenkins/Bachs, et al.)
CIVIL WAR: Iron Man (Gage/Haun, et al.)
CIVIL WAR: The Return (Jenkins/Raney, et al.)
CIVIL WAR: Choosing Sides (multi-authors/artists)
CIVIL WAR: Chronicles numbers #1, #9, #10 and #11

and, outside of "Marvel Events," I picked up:

IRON MAN: Director of Shield #? (Knauf/de la Torre)
CAPTAIN AMERICA #39 (Brubaker/de la Torre)

...so I've got a little reading to do.