I’m in Oregon now, free wifi at my hotel – wa-hoo!
I need to catch you up on my Michigan adventure. First the Detroit airport. Which I love
because they have one of those cool colorful tunnels that connects the consourses
and it changes color
a lot!
Connecting through Detroit always means a trip to Sora, in terminal A, near gate 36
for sushi and miso soup.
The Michigan SCBWI conference was wonderful; extremely friendly (God, I love Midwesterners) and upbeat. Big thanks to
And there was a real-live reader there! Meet my new friend, Eliza Webb, whose mom was at the conference and who totally made my day by coming over to talk to me.
Along with giving speeches and critiquing manuscripts and meeting kindred spirits, I snuck in a run on a beautiful autumn day. But truly, the highlight of the visit for me was this: Jello salad with Mystery Bits in it. This is a staple at United Methodist dinners, which were a staple of my childhood. If you read CATALYST and wondered about the Jello salad, this is what I was talking about. It’s green, it wiggles, and it might be an ingredient in embalming fluid. But damn, it tastes good.
So now I am in Oregon and I have been awake for a million hours. I am at the coolest hotel I have ever stayed at, and I had a great dinner with librarians, and a Famous Author wandered by, and I even worked for a couple hours on my revisions, but all those details will have to wait until after I get some sleep!
Zzzzzzzzzzzz
Have fun! I’m so sad that I just discovered last week that you’re in Portland now, and I’m too busy to come up (from Eugene) to enjoy your talk. Sigh. And alas. And stuff.
Yay, Portland! I’m from Vancouver, Washington, just across the river. Unfortunately, I can’t come hear you speak b/c I’m six hours away at university. Sad! I’m intrigued about your hotel. I’m sure you don’t want to post its name while you’re still staying there, but will you later? I have a wedding night to plan! =)
I really don’t see much difference between the Jell-O and the sushi.
firstly, the color changing tunnel looks really cool, unless it changes every five seconds or something, because then it could be disorientingand or trippy and or seizure inducing.
secondly, remind me never to eat with you, because that was such a strong likelihood anyway. raw fishes are something ive never been brave enough to try, but im pretty sure i would be grossed out too much to actually evaluate it on its taste. as for jello salad, i have been attending a wesleyan church for the past 8 years, and as you may or may not know, wesleyanism broke off from methodism many years back, but retained the name of the founders of methodism, john and charles wesley. needless to say, mystery jello salad is a big part of my life.
thirdly, eliza is beautiful and makes me wish i was better at portraits than i am, cause i would totally paint her. maybe as a character from one of my favorite books. she has really unique/cool/charming features.
i think thats it from me.
See you tonight.
🙂
That picture of you and your fan at SCBWI makes me green with jealousy. When I was a teenager, I found myself staying at the same hotel as the big LA SCBWI conference — not that I knew what it was at the time. All I knew was that I was staying at the same hotel as a million children’s book writers, including JUDY BLUME. I spent the weekend skulking in the lobby, trying catch a glimpse…but unlike your bold new friend, I never had the nerve to speak to anyone.
I’m sitting here squinting at the SCBWI group photo, looking for people I recognize…
And when did the Detroit airport get so cool? Last time I was there it was a dump!
Whoopsie! Forgot to sign in. That was me doing the squinting and making derrogatory remarks about DTW.
A staple of church potlucks in the Southwest is seven-layer dip. Mmmm…. so delightful. And I LOVE jello and pudding.
I’m glad that you had fun at SCBWI.
I’m in the veeeeery back center of that photo, the little blue and brown blob waving at the camera. Hee! And you were TOTALLY worth the drive from Canada, too.
I too have eaten the Mystery Jello Salad, which is why I deftly avoided it at SCBWI. Except that the more popular variations at our church potlucks involved orange jello and shredded carrots, or occasionally green jello mixed with Cool-Whip and marshmallows. *shudders*