WWW

Words
Worked on the Prologue today. Got half of it down. Very pleased. Should be able to finish tomorrow.

By the by, I'm wearing my wrist brace as a preventive measure.


Weights
My fault. Scheduled to attend at least two workout classes and attended neither. And lunch with my sister (see below) at Claim Jumper restaurant was...filling.


Whatever
Morning was spent reading way too much. Loved it!

Called a couple of agencies today. Followed up with a couple of jobs and the status of a third. Nothing yet.

Lunch with my sister. My nephew was quite active at the restaurant; he refused to sleep and, instead, looked around the world with those dark brown eyes.

Watched way too much television when I got home.

Highlight: Wednesday

Prob with the escrow papers forced us to delay signing our new refi loan.

Catchup: Tuesday

The major highlight for the day was attending the Darren Shan booksigning.

We woke late and I ran errands. We drove to San Diego around 1315 and arrived at Mysterious Galaxy around 1500. Mr. Shan wasn't due to arrive until 1700. Thus, we looked at books, I showed R. the killer rabbit (from the Monty Python and the Holy Grail movie) and sipped iced drinks at the nearby Starbucks. Bright and warm day.

The bookstore was packed with over forty people by the time Mr. Shan arrived. Most were children. My first impression of the Irish-born author was how young he was. Easily early thirties. According to R., he did his first tour at age 24. Ugh.

After a brief introduction, Mr. Shan gathered volunteers from the audience. He and the volunteers reenacted the first scene of his first book which introduced his main character, Darren Shan. He then did an interview with another kid asking him preset questions. Of course, since Mr. Shan (author) was suppose to be (have been?) a vampire, I immediately thought of 'Interview with a Vampire' by Anne Rice.

Q&A followed which was quite lengthy. We had all our books signed (complete sets of both the true first British edition and hardback true American editions.) R. was very pleased. Dinner in San Diego that night.

A wonderful ending to a wonderful vacation.

Random for the Day

djmags++musings

And I thought my Highlights entries were short!

Job hunting

Call from one of my agencies. Wanted to know if I could come in on Tuesday for an interview for that city job. I told them I had made plans but was available for the rest of the week. The agency asked if I could meet that afternoon as well. I gulped, thinking about my shirts but said yes. The recruiter contacted the client and, of course, they said they'd like to meet that afternoon. I scrambled and bought a couple of new dress shirts. Fortunately the suit was fine.

I had mixed feelings after the interview. First, there were four folks who interviewed me. No prob with that. But it was over fast. Fifteen minutes tops. And I'm not sure I want to accept the position now that I know more details about the position. (Details to follow later.) I expressed my concerns to the recruiter who said she'd call the client. She did and told me that they were impressed with me and will call for a second interview with the director himself. And there's competition: another agency has sent their temp to be interviewed as well.

Sigh. We'll see what happens later this week.

Catchup: Saturday and Sunday

We spent the weekend at the Festival of Books on on the UCLA campus. (See link for details of the event.) Wow! What another incredible experience.

R. literally jumped out of bed early Saturday morn while I groggily(sp?) followed. We left around 0915 (unusual since we normally don't crawl out of bed on weekends until after 1100.) We parked indoors at a choice spot nears the stairs which turned out to be a good thing since the sun shown all day and humid easily rose to the 80's.

We both play and work the Festival. While we saw lots of booths and authors, we attend mainly for the latter. Specifically, we brought books to be signed by attending authors.

Over 400 authors attended this year's fair. We saw and had books signed by (in no particular order): Julie Andrews, Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, Mary Higgins Clark, Carol Higgins Clark, Lauren Haney, Richard Peck, Gary Soto, and many more. Saturday proved the worse day: hot, humid, the most people, and we had lots of books to be signed. Not being in shape didn't help, either, especially the staircase in the middle of the event. We walked up and down those bricks at least four times on Saturday alone. I don't know how the more...rotund folks attending the fair made it. I saw one toothpick youth trying to catch his breath at the top at one point.

On Saturday we walked and had dinner in Westwood.

Sunday proved to be less stressful since we had less books (though the weather rose even hotter.) Dined in West Hollywood that evening.

Catchup: Friday

Write
Attended Lindsey Davis booksigning down at Mysterious Galaxy. Very funny woman. And informative. She didn't start writing professional, for example, until the age of 35. Yeah! There's still hope for me. And she signed all of our books. Yeah!

Catchup: Thursday

Whatever
Visited my sister and nephew all day. The extra pound on him has made a difference. Boy, though, he eats! My sister and I had lunch at a Japanese restaurant; afterwards, my sister got a pedicure while I watched my nephew. After we got back to her place I briefly chatted with my step-nephew before heading home.