Good night, Austin

Wow.

This has been a whale of a day. It started with tourists.

Image hosted by TinyPic.com This is one of the fun ways you can get around Austin. This is actually a tour group, cruising the city on those bizarre Segway things. It looked like so much fun, I was tempted to ditch the conference.

But the people here are too nice. I spent most of the day at the Texas Library Association Conference. I had a booksigning, bought jewelry (yes!), and gave a speech to LOTS of librarians. LOTS. I freak out a little bit when the back row is too far away to see. The folks in the back row of my speech were in a different time zone.

After the conference I met up with Sarah Dessan (who is sweet and fun and is someone I wish I could hang out with more) and we went to the best bookstore in Austin, Book People.

Image hosted by TinyPic.com They keep a bulletin board for people looking to start new book groups. How smart is that?

Image hosted by TinyPic.com Got to love a bookstore that has poultry displays.

Image hosted by TinyPic.com Sarah aka writergrl

Image hosted by TinyPic.com We had a magnificent crowd, including my friends Sean and Tekla. It was a fun night.

I have a school visit in the morning, then a mad dash to the airport, to head to Philly via Chicago. I’m bummed I didn’t get to see some of my other Texas friends, but there wasn’t enough time. Shucks. I guess that means I have to come back to Austin to play, ride Segways, eat barbeque, listen to great music and buy a hat.

Sounds like a plan.