Conversations Abound

The blog plan was to blog about my excellent day yesterday and the second pair of new shoes I bought, but I am in a different mood now and will save some of that for another post. Now I am working on typing my new novel. For those who don't know, I hand write, so now I am typing the novel I wrote this summer. This is taking forever. But I am reaching a milestone-- I am on page 189 out of 285 pages. My goal is to make it to page 200 tonight. Matt is going to the grocery store so I accomplish this (we usually go together, in case you were wondering). But since I am feeling all antsy, I thought I would blog for a few minutes about yesterday. I was lucky enough to be invited by Listening Library Audiobook God, Tim Ditlow (who thought my Cuba Gooding look-alike was hilarious. I love him for that), to the Chicago Humanities Festival's Conversation with Philip Pullman. Admittedly, I have only read one of the His Dark Materials books. I remember liking it, but finding it a bit too complicated for my taste (I like my books straight forward, and my TV shows crappy). But I thought it would be fun, and there would be a bunch of other audiobook-loving librarians along for the ride. Plus, we were to be taken out to a fabulous lunch at the Russian Tea Room. The "Conversation" was interesting, although I was confused. Not because the conversation itself was confusing (I'm not an idiot), but the two people having the conversation with Pullman were a father and daughter team who I never got the full story on. I want to say it was a college professor who studies Pullman for deep, overly-analytical reasons, and his precocious Pullman-loving daughter, but I'm not really sure. No matter. The best part of the whole conversation was when a member of the audience said that he didn't know what his question for Pullman was, but he would improvise a song and the question would naturally form. I was amazed that Pullman could not only listen to this guy sing with a straight face, but also hear the question enough to answer it.

On to the Russian Tea Room, one of the greatest meals I've ever eaten. It was so good! Perhaps it's my Russian heritage. And such wonderful conversation (I am using that word way too much in this post)! I ended up sitting with fabulous (and funny!) YA librarians, along with two people from Booklinks (Laura) and Booklist (Gillian). Craziest of small worlds: Gillian, who sat across from me, ended up being the person at Booklist who gave Get Well Soon a fabulous review! She thought I was hilarious, and we had so much fun chatting and laughing. I truly enjoyed my end of the table (not that I wouldn't have enjoyed the other end, as well, but we had assigned seats, and I was very happy with my placement. Whoever chose the seating arrangement: bravo!). I felt so happy, making new friends and eating great food. It was a spectacular day.

Enough of the happy stuff. Back to typing. My book. Cause of course I'm already typing.