Maxigumee

So. A few days ago, I got a text message from my friend Jill that says “DOOCE IS DOING A BOOK SIGNING IN BROOKLYN THIS WEDNESDAY AND I’M GOING.” I responded to it by promptly freaking out and demanding to know where exactly the book signing was being held. Jill tells me that it’s being held at Soda Bar, a place that is coincidentally, right up the street from me (kind of).

It was a bit difficult for me to contain my excitement over this. After all, I’d been reading Dooce (A.K.A. Heather Armstrong’s blog) pretty much religiously since I was in like tenth grade. While normal high schoolers entertained themselves properly with things like video games and hard drugs, I abated my boredom by reading Dooce. And other blogs. But mostly Dooce. I don’t think most of my friends even know what a blog is. Either that or they’re the kind of people that say things like, “I just opened up a BLAHG on BLAHGGER.”

The day of the signing, my friend Shannon told me that Jill got caught up in work or some lame thing like that, so she couldn’t make it into the city and that she wasn’t really sure if she wanted to go, either. I told her that it was alright but that I kind of sort of really, really, really wanted to go and if we went, we would only have to stay five minutes pleeeeeeeaaase.

So we went.

And it was COOL.

And REALLY WEIRD.

Mainly because if you read about somebody’s life for like five years and then meet them and have them recognize you from your Flickr stream, it gives you one of the most bizarre, freaky-Deja-Vu-Truman-Show-Is-This-Really-Happening feelings EVER.

The whole book-signing situation was pretty laid back and when Shannon and I arrived at the bar, we found about only eight other people (Heather and her husband, Jon included) sitting around a coffee table chit-chatting. The group was a little bit hard to find at first in the large bar, but I automatically knew where to go once I heard an unmistakeable southern accent coming from a corner in one of the rooms.

We introduced ourselves and stayed for a little while as more people started to trickle in. I bought one of the books and had Heather, Jon, and a few of the other contributing authors sign it before Shannon got a little too antsy and we had to go. I suppose we had overstayed our expected five minutes by about twenty five.

After we left, we called Jill to give her the scoop on everything that happened. I think that Jill, despite her absence from the event, is the only person I know who could share my nerdy excitement about it. “What did she look like??” Jill asked Shannon on the phone as we walked to Prospect Park. Shannon, not really able to spare much enthusiasm, handed the phone to me so I could tell her. “It was SO COOL,” I practically giggled into the phone. “I even got pictures with them! ….. And they licked me! ….. Well, not physically. But they pretended to!”