Wherein I Meet the Bloggess (& Other Stuff)

I met Jenny Lawson on Wednesday, and she is, by far, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

If you don’t know who she is, you should check this out:  http://www.thebloggess.com.  And, after you do that, you’ll probably want to read her book, "Let’s Pretend This Never Happened".  You won’t regret it.

It was about an hour 45 minute drive since the signing was at a bookstore just outside of NYC in Montclair, NJ.  I arrived about 10 minutes before the event started.  It was a pretty small, cozy little space with room for maybe 15 people to sit in chairs.  I was one of those people, since I had reserved a "ticket" (aka, purchase of the book).  There were about 10-15 more people standing in a line that barely fit along the side of the store that I assume were non-ticket people, since I was told I could squeeze through the line to find a chair to sit in.  "We have a seat coming through!"

I was actually surprised that there weren’t more people there (not that they’d really have been able to fit inside of the store), but that sort of made it all more special, to me.  I felt like I was part of this small group of loyal, dedicated people.  About 5 minutes after I sat down, one of the bookstore staff members stepped up to the podium.  I’d expected that she was going to introduce Jenny.  Instead, she announced that they were pleased to have a special guest do the introduction.  A one Rosie O’Donnell, who had come for support after recently having read the book.  I had no idea Rosie lived in the NYC/NJ area, but, there she appeared, walking out from around the corner of a bookcase that had been blocking my view of the left end of the bookstore.  The best part was that they had said there were a few more chairs to sit in on that side, so if I’d decided to sit over there, I’d have just randomly sat down next to her, and it would’ve been all, "ohai, just sitting next to Rosie O’Donnell, here". 

Rosie proceeded to express her admiration for Jenny and began to introduce her as she squeezed in past the line and knelt down at the first row of chairs.  I think she was trying to express that she was feeling anxious. 

 

A Jenny appears!

"Guys, I didn’t run away!"

For those who don’t really know about Jenny, she’s been battling depression and anxiety for a while.  She has her good and bad days.  Making public appearances is difficult for her, but what’s incredibly inspiring is that she does all of these things anyway, and she does them well.  She’s always able to be herself, and she’s very open about having an anxiety disorder.  When she was up there, everything flowed perfectly; she was able to hide it so incredibly well, and I never would have even guessed she’d felt anxious if she hadn’t reminded us a few times that it was an accomplishment that she hadn’t run off.  I seriously hope I can get to that point, one day.

Anyway, after some introductory remarks, she picked an excerpt from her book to read.  She chose the story about the time she decided to try a colon-cleansing using laxatives and ended up taking far too many because they were having no effect, at first, and how all of this lead up to one explosive event where she was bound to her toilet, and a potential rapist who turned out to be her cat was pushing what she believed were notes under the bathroom door.  The room was filled with laughter for pretty much the entirety of the reading.  It was amazing.

Then, there was a short Q&A before the signing began.

A bunch of people had brought awesome gifts and seemed to have plenty to say.  I was obviously increasingly nervous as I approached the front of the line.  Rosie squeezed past us to leave at that point.  I really had wanted to just tell her as she passed by me that it was awesome of her to have come to support Jenny, but I hesitated too much.  Oh well, bleh.

And then, it was my turn.  

The best thing I could come up with, after telling her how nice it was to meet her, was that I was sorry I didn’t have any awesome presents for her, but "next time!"  Being as my mind had been completely blank up until just before that moment, I think I did alright.  At least I said something.  I didn’t want to even attempt telling her about her being inspiring because I’m all majorly anxious and such because I wanted to not totally flub when meeting someone, for once.  Plus, there wasn’t enough time for that.  But anyway, she told me that my presence was a present, ha.  And that she really liked my sweater.  I didn’t even know this picture was taken

But then, this.

As I was being handed back my camera and was about to turn to leave, she said, "it was really nice to meet you," once more.  It made me feel appreciated, and I don’t know.  I think she may have picked up on my anxiety.  Maybe, she just knew.  I actually hope she did.

The whole thing only lasted about an hour, so I was home by 10 that night, which was good, since I have to be up by 5:30am every morning for my rotation.  Not that I went to bed on time anyway, but still.  The driving part was entirely worth it; there’s really no question about that.  The trip was worth it.  Going alone was worth it.  Not having had a chance to eat since earlier that afternoon since I had to get ready and leave as soon as I got home that day was worth it.  And, I has a signed book.

I talked about Brad Go in a friends-only entry a week or so ago.  He’s sort of an independent musician (he also does film-editing) trying to gain recognition, and his "Ikea Song" music video has been circling the interwebs ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haxd9ncak00 ).  He’s so super nice, and I tweet with him on a pretty regular basis.  Last night, he brought up an NYC meet-up he’s planning for mid-July.  Except, it was in a reply directed only to me and Andrew G. (gunnarolla –  http://www.youtube.com/user/gunnarolla ).  So, I thought that was interesting.  He’ll probably announce it publicly when the actual date is decided, though.  So anyway, I may be meeting him next month.  And possibly Andrew.  I need to not flub this up.  Seriously.

Must learn guitar hardcore over the next month….

Must train hardcore over the next month and start doing some major crosstraining.

I went to a reptile show in PA, yesterday with Tamara, her..er…ex, yet still best friend/boyfriendish type person, Ray (I really don’t know what the deal is, there), and his sister, and it was awesome.  I saw a lot of neat things that I’d love to eventually have as pets when I’m all settled with a job, etc.  I even saw a tarantula I really liked, and I would never have previously imagined wanting one of those.  I probably still wouldn’t, but this one was pretty cool, because it had purple markings on it.  I just don’t want anything that’s venomous or will give me any nasty bites, and I’d be surprised if it didn’t do either of those things.  There were some turtles that were pretty cool-looking.  Both Tamara and I seemed to be fascinated with animals that were really flat, ha.  There were these frogs…I forget what they were called, that looked like they’d been steamrolled.  They also had these lizards called grandises that were really colorful.  Thanks, Google images:

Ray, ended up getting another tortoise (he’s got a couple others…one younger one, and one that’s about 10 years old and maybe a foot+ long) and some new housing for the smaller ones.  It was larger than he realized, so Tamara and I were sitting in the back of the car the ride back with this giant tray-like thing on our laps…but, it was ok, because we had a tortoise to play with.  We stopped at On the Border once we were back in town near Ray’s house and had lunch.  Tamara and I both ordered this interesting new thing they had on the menu with a tempura-fried avocado stuffed with chicken and cheese.  It also came with a chicken enchilada with sour cream sauce.  The avocado thing was pretty decent, but it’s probably not something I’d get again.  I wanted to get fried ice cream since that’s the only place that seems to have it anymore, but I need to save money, and we had the tortoise with us there hiding in Ray’s sister Steph’s purse (in a little plastic container thing with holes, not just freely roaming around in there, ha) since it would be too hot in the car.  

When we got back to Ray’s house, where I’d met up with them, I was introduced to his mom and all of his pets.  He’s got 2 dogs, 2 cats (one is a full Bengal kitty!), and the tortoises.  His oldest/biggest tortoise is named Scalia.  Yes, after the judge.  He brought him out to the backyard to eat, or mow the lawn…whichever term you prefer :p.  That thing can go on for an hour just chomping on grass.  It was awesome, and it kind of made me want a future tortoise.  Archer, his younger dog, who’s an Akita-German Shephard mix, was supposedly iffy around new people, and Tamara wasn’t sure if it was safe for me to come in at first, but he ended up being perfectly fine with my presence and warmed up to me immediately, so that made me happy.  We sat out back for probably a good hour just playing fetch with Archer, looking at birds, and watching Scalia amusingly chomp away, because it’s always funny watching tortoises eat.  Then, things died down and Scalia went to his little napping spot under the shade of a bush.  Tamara and I were pretty tired by that point, so I headed home….and picked up some delicious frozen yogurt from Yogo Factory on the way.  I was sad because they had run out of most of the other flavors I wanted to try by then (I need to go back for cake batter/red velvet), but I went with a peach/blueberry twist, so, still tasty.  Also, I think fruity pebbles is my new favorite topping…

Next Saturday, I have plans to go to the Philly art museum with Don, because when he was feeling all down a while ago, he told me that was one of the things he hadn’t done in a long time that he wanted to do, but felt he had no one to do with.  Another was going to the shore.  I forgot what the third one was, huh (ah, I remembered later…it was going to the King of Prussia Mall).  But, anyway, I told him that we would go do those things.  I’m not big into art museums and am more into science-related ones, but I think I haven’t been to the art museum since I was going to Drexel for graphic design…many eons ago, heh.  Forget if I’ve ever mentioned that here?  Yep, started out in graphic design right after high school.  Only lasted less than 2 semesters because that was back when my procrastination was at its worst.  I’ve come a long way, considering.

The Saturday after that, there are plans to go berry picking at the farm (the one I had wanted to go to a couple weeks ago) with Tamara, her sister, maybe sister’s friend or other family members, Ray, and my friend Kat.  This really excites me, because I haven’t gotten to do anything with Kat, other than having dinner once, in the past couple of months.  She just gave birth to her baby girl, Evie, a couple of months ago and has been busy with her, but she said that Mike, her husband, could take care of her for a day so we could go do the farm thing.  So, yay!  Strawberries will probably be all picked out by then, but there’ll still be blueberries, cherries and sugar snap peas.

This is the first time since maybe…last summer, that I’ve had plans this many consecutive weekends in a row.  Or at all, really.

Now that this has taken about 2.5 hours to write, I’m going to go either take a nap, read, or play some Diablo 3 before my last pet-sitting job of the day.  Sadly, I need to face reality over the next week and start working on my research project and studying for the final comprehensive exam and board exam.  And job-searching and resume-rewriting.  Ugh…can’t wait until this is over.