Gaithersburg Book Festival Fun

Lulu and I trekked down to Monkey County today to visit the Gaithersburg (Maryland) Book Festival. It was a great way to escape the traffic of Frederick County during the G8. Well, except for the fact that Frederick G8 traffic is STILL lighter than Gaithersburg on a random Saturday afternoon traffic.

It was well worth it, though. Crab cakes for lunch! Meeting Authors! New books! A trip to the "big mall!" Well, that last bit was Lulu's favorite part, anyway. She got several new outfits for summer, since she's somehow become too tall for all her shorts over the winter. I thought winter was supposed to be the dormant season where the kids stop growing for a few months. I guess that only applies to lawns.

We ended up leaving before we had a chance to meet Jenny Lawson, a.k.a. The Bloggess. I did manage to pay full price for her book, Let's Pretend This Never Happened. So I suppose that sort-of makes up for missing her. Lulu couldn't stand melting in the heat any longer. Apparently the crab cake bribe had expired, so further bribery was needed to keep her happy. To that end, we got Godiva chocolates at the mall. I endured, somehow.

The main author I went to meet was Steve Ulfelder, though. He writes the fabulous (Edgar Nominated!) Conway Sax mystery series, beginning with Purgatory Chasm, and the newly-released The Whole Lie, which I must get ASAP! On top of that, he's a really nice guy, and it was interesting learning how Conway evolved into the character he is today.

On the way home, driving up I-270, we saw something eminently cool. A convoy of three Chinook helicopters headed straight toward Camp David. Always a neat thing. I had Lulu try to take a picture, but the trees kept getting in the way, and the helicopters were going a lot faster than traffic. This was the best she could do:

Yeah. Not great. I swear they're there somewhere.

This is what they looked like:

Since I don't have a picture of the actual helicopters, for anyone who cares, this flew over my house about 20 minutes ago.

The MetLife blimp, which is superior to world leaders in Chinooks, because it has Snoopy on it.

I'd like to see any of the world superpowers at the G8 try to compete with Snoopy on a blimp. Blimp wins every time.

Sad thing with this blog, I had a FABULOUS idea for this post this morning before I left for the book festival. I had this really catchy title, and a humorous couple of paragraphs about something that I thought was hysterically funny. Can I remember any of it now? Of course not!

Nor did I remember to hand out my fancy-schmancy new business cards to a single person I met today. My brain is going soft. In my defense, it was 88 degrees outside today, and I'm a little fried.

Finally, by the time we got back to the familiar roads of rural Frederick, Lulu and I were completely slap happy. This always makes for a fun drive. We like to play the Alphabet Game, where you have to find the letters of the alphabet in order on signs, other cars, etc. When we reach a letter that's hard to find, we start changing the words we see to incorporate the needed letter. Worthington becomes Jorthington, Taco Bell becomes Taco Jell. It gets completely nonsensical after a while, and usually devolves into discussions of our least favorite words (currently tops of Lulu's list: muffin top and jeggings, as well as Mantyhose. Yes, that is a real thing, unfortunately.) We start inventing bizarre stories involving all the reviled words, and end up laughing so hard I can barely see to drive.

All in all, this was a great day. I didn't write a lick, and I have no intention of starting now. I'm going to unwind with my new books from the festival, and relive the story of the woman with the muffin top having a convo about her vacay, while wearing her jeggings. She bought some mantyhose, decided to change into blousy trousers, and insisted they be called pantaloons, instead.

And with that, I can't focus on this nonsense anymore. It's been a tiring day.