I'm in Pasadena, California, for the day. I flew here yesterday, leaving on the 6 am flight out of Bristol, landing in Burbank late morning. This afternoon I'll be pleased to receive the California Young Readers Medal for The War That Saved My Life at the California Library Association conference's Rose Tea. Tomorrow I'll fly home, arriving there at midnight. It's a peculiar sort of trip because it's a lot of flying for only one thing--no other events tied to it. The time change didn't help--you could either say I woke up at 4 am yesterday, and went to bed slightly before midnight, Eastern time, or you could say I crashed at 9 pm last night, Pacific time, but woke up at 1 am the same day. Either way I slept as long as I could and was wide awake in my hotel room at 6 am local time. By 7:15 I was in the only open nearby coffee shop, where the three white customers in residence, including me, all had fresh shower-slicked hair, and all the customers, including the two black ones, were hunched over cups of coffee, reading books. I felt very at home.
I read two books on the flight here, both for review, and after coffee and superb avocado toast I came back to my hotel room, where I am now, and wrote both reviews. There's not much else to do in Pasadena on Saturday before 8 am. I suppose there's probably a farmer's market somewhere, but I can't haul a bunch of fresh veg with me on tomorrow's flight home. At breakfast I was reading the book I picked up yesterday, at Vroman's, a wonderful independent bookstore here in Pasadena: The Body, by Bill Bryson. I like Bill Bryson always, but I think this topic is uniquely suited to his wry, gentle writing. "...it is surely astounding to reflect that not once in the three billion years since life began has your personal line of descent been broken. For you to be here now, every one of your ancestors had to successfully pass on its genetic material to a new generation before being snuffed out or otherwise sidetracked from the procreative process."
Last night I had dinner with Christine and Amy, two teachers here in Pasadena. Christine picked me up at the hotel; when I got in her car, she said, "Do you often get into cars with total strangers?" I replied, "Only if I've met them on the internet."
Christine was the first teacher who ever wrote me about The War That Saved My Life, the actual week of its publication. We've been Facebook friends ever since. Usually when I go to conferences I have busier schedules, and know lots of other people there. But this isn't a school library conference and there are almost no other kid-lit authors here. Nor do I know many people in Pasadena. But I did know Christine, virtually at least. She was bold enough to want to spend time with me, and I was bold enough to want to spend time with her. As such, and with the addition of her friend Ann, we had a really lovely evening, and now I have two new real-world friends.
Despite my chattiness I am not at all an extrovert, and sometimes it feels foreign to me to go out and look for company and friends. I find, though, that when I do I am always glad. Realistically a seventh-grade English teacher in Pasadena is not likely to be an axe-murderer, no matter what she says. The biggest risks to last night were that Christine and I might find each other boring, or offensive, or I'd hate the restaurant she chose, and those were actually pretty small risks compared to the chances of having a very nice time in good company, which I did.
Slightly outside my comfort zone: it's where the magic happens, every time.
I read two books on the flight here, both for review, and after coffee and superb avocado toast I came back to my hotel room, where I am now, and wrote both reviews. There's not much else to do in Pasadena on Saturday before 8 am. I suppose there's probably a farmer's market somewhere, but I can't haul a bunch of fresh veg with me on tomorrow's flight home. At breakfast I was reading the book I picked up yesterday, at Vroman's, a wonderful independent bookstore here in Pasadena: The Body, by Bill Bryson. I like Bill Bryson always, but I think this topic is uniquely suited to his wry, gentle writing. "...it is surely astounding to reflect that not once in the three billion years since life began has your personal line of descent been broken. For you to be here now, every one of your ancestors had to successfully pass on its genetic material to a new generation before being snuffed out or otherwise sidetracked from the procreative process."
Last night I had dinner with Christine and Amy, two teachers here in Pasadena. Christine picked me up at the hotel; when I got in her car, she said, "Do you often get into cars with total strangers?" I replied, "Only if I've met them on the internet."
Christine was the first teacher who ever wrote me about The War That Saved My Life, the actual week of its publication. We've been Facebook friends ever since. Usually when I go to conferences I have busier schedules, and know lots of other people there. But this isn't a school library conference and there are almost no other kid-lit authors here. Nor do I know many people in Pasadena. But I did know Christine, virtually at least. She was bold enough to want to spend time with me, and I was bold enough to want to spend time with her. As such, and with the addition of her friend Ann, we had a really lovely evening, and now I have two new real-world friends.
Despite my chattiness I am not at all an extrovert, and sometimes it feels foreign to me to go out and look for company and friends. I find, though, that when I do I am always glad. Realistically a seventh-grade English teacher in Pasadena is not likely to be an axe-murderer, no matter what she says. The biggest risks to last night were that Christine and I might find each other boring, or offensive, or I'd hate the restaurant she chose, and those were actually pretty small risks compared to the chances of having a very nice time in good company, which I did.
Slightly outside my comfort zone: it's where the magic happens, every time.
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