Friday night the Snook and I headed over to the Seymour Center to hear one of my favorite authors speak: Bill Bryson. He’s on a tour promoting his new memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. My first impression was that he’s a lot younger than I imagined! He entertained the crowd by reading selections from the new book, along with a few popular stories from his other works. He seems to really like Australians and the crowd was very receptive. We had a few good chuckles. A lot of my attention was diverted, though, by the idiot a few rows in front of us wearing a rainbow beanie with a propeller on it. (He was old enough to be my Dad.) He just gave off that “I’m the biggest fanboi EVER!” vibe that annoys me so much. As expected, he was the first to bound up to the microphone when they opened the floor to questions. He ended up asking three altogether, even going so far as to invite Bill over to his house for a barbie. (Bill graciously declined, no doubt correctly envisioning the gathering as Literary Nerd Fest 2007.) I guess there’s one in every crowd…

And on a related note, can I just say how much I love gleebooks? Not only did they put on the event, but they actually gave us free tickets (for responding to one of the e-mail newsletters). “Minerva” also rang me this morning to confirm details for our upcoming trip on the Gleewarts Express. I love her attention to detail. “Outline of Journey: We cannot put this in print anywhere as followers of Voldemort are, sadly, everywhere.” HA! You know, I’d love to work for them someday…