Wacky Wednesday

Hello Cyber Friends,

Wednesday was an awesome day, both as a mother and an aspiring author. So why, oh why, did I leave the camera home all day? Should I blame my age or my hair color this time?

The field trip with Big Bear was not to the airport terminal as anticipated. We went behind the runways to the airport fire station and got a close-up look at all the nifty trucks, smelled the locker-room, witnessed the flash-fried helmet of one lucky fireman, and saw the bunk rooms. Ooooh, ahhhh. And just as we were leaving, they got two calls! A deep hand cut and someone else with a hearing aid stuck in their ear. Hopefully all is well with these folks now.

The second part was a stop at the National Guard hangar. The kids were in seventh heaven climbing all over a real Black Hawk helicopter (above) and the enormous Chinook (below). I was really cursing my camera-less self there.

That night I went to see Margaret Atwood. Her talk was the opener for a conference on the Future of Reading. This included her take on the e-book revolution. She likened it to the dawn of the automobile age. There were several different cars around vying for the market, even electric ones, but in the end only a few won out. In her opinion, people will want both paper and electronic books.

On the importance of literacy, she pointed out that one of the most significant emerging sectors in the business world is comprised of woman in third world countries with cell phones. I had no idea.

Overall, she was funny and very sharp. I did wait in the autograph line, but didn’t have the nerve to say anything. As she signed my copy of The Year of the Flood, she remarked that my first name was romantic. I smiled and thanked her.

Thanks mom, for picking a first name slightly off the beaten path!

So what signed books reside in your collection?