Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Housewife turned Twilight Obsessed



My trip down to meet Stephenie Meyers on Tuesday wasn’t going to happen, and I had come to depressing grips with it. I even went so far as to offer my tickets to some of my friends because I was having a little crisis with one of my kids. Then it turns out that the kid crisis got postponed for another day and I suddenly had a free afternoon in which to go.

My travel partner changed from Prince Erik, to the super willing T-Rev (who’d have thunk he was a vampire/werewolf fan), to kind of but not really interested Evo-man, and finally to Rkimedes.

Erik begged Rkimedes to go with me saying that he needed a vacation. I think she replied to the fact that he had just came back from a vacation in the San Juans.

'Well, yeah, but I need a vacation from my mental wife.' he replied. So Rkimedes agreed to accompany me to Portland.

I went to Prince Erik’s royal work station to drop off Evo-man and pick up Rkimedes to begin a very long adventure. I was a little worried that I would get too tired to drive since I hadn’t gotten more than 4-5 hours of sleep on Monday night. Thankfully Rkimedes was able to provide enough sparkly and thought provoking dialogue to keep me going. It is so weird to actually talk to another adult for any length of time. I’m so used to the babble of princess talk or game system talk, so it was a welcome refresher.

Right as we got to Portland the wires pulled out of my GPS system and left us in the dark as to how to arrive at our destination. Yes we had an address but we were clueless as to which direction to take. Fortunately Rkimedes pulled down the instructions from her cell phone and we were soon back on track. We then noticed that her cell phone batteries wouldn’t last much longer so we verbally read the directions and tried to memorize them before we were left in the technological darkness again. And we were about 3 turns from our final destination the cell phone gave up the ghost. Luckily our fried brains retained enough of the vital information to get us the rest of the way there.

Since my cell phone was blinking a battery warning we ran into Fred Meyer and bought a charger. Nothing like not having an emergency communication device with you when you have a 4 hour drive looming on the distant horizon.

It was about 6:05 p.m. when we noticed that the Marquee with Stephenie’s name on it had the start time of 6:00 p.m. even though our ticket said 7.

So we quickly scooted to the end of a two block long line. I was misinformed into thinking that we had reserved seat numbers. Nope – first come – first serve. I think we were in the mid-400’s out of a little over 500 people allowed into the theater. So much for buying my ticket on day one and arriving 50 minutes early. The wait never seemed too long and my excitement was mounting as we ran into more and more giggly, bouncing middle-aged women. Prince Erik missed out!

As soon as we were in the theater and got our signed copies of ‘The Host’ I immediately spied a familiar face – could that be the actor Solomon Trimble who will be playing Sam Uley in the upcoming ‘Twilight Movie.’ Oh, my Honkin Heart’, No I didn’t scream even though my thoughts were. Poor Rkimedes graciously took our picture. There were about 5 people ahead of us in line and 20 behind.

I told him I was very appreciative for him to go out of his way to deal with a bunch of crazy ladies. He gave me a big smile and (be still my pounding heart) put his arm around me. ‘Sigh, float, look like a stupid idiot, whatever you do when you’re on cloud nine. He was really sweet and I tried super hard not to be the giggly groupie.

We sat next to a Grandmother from SLC, and her daughter and her daughter’s teenage daughter who introduced them all to the twilight books and gave them all a common subject to talk about. It was a sweet trio and I had to fill them in on all my Twilight browsing expertise about the film, books, whatever they asked.

Even though we were in the 400’s we were able to get our books signed in less than 2 hours.
All too soon we were there. Stephenie Meyers’s hand was a beautiful blur. She must have some vampire speed blood in that hand of hers. She was kind enough to make eye contact and thank us by name for coming. Then it was over, well the signing was at least. We had dinner at a nearby café/pub and were pulling out of Portland around 10:00 with my GPS plugged back in.

I found our drive home to be even quicker and easier than our drive down, except for the two exits that I almost missed while being euphorically tired. It would be wise to apologize to Rkimedes about the crazy driving there at the end. And I think she is a Saint for putting up with me and my bouncing kid-like giddiness for the entire afternoon and evening. That and supplying, like I said, wonderful conversation.

So, I’m proud to introduce my complete collection of the Stephenie Meyer’s autographed library. Wahoo!!!


If I would have had the time I would have made this tee-shirt to wear it would have said this – with a cool logo and font

Front of shirt.

I got my
MBA
Mythological Beings Association

Through The Stephenie Meyer Academic Library

Back of shirt

Courses completed...
X Vampires
X Werewolves
X Alien Invaders
__ Obsessed (but still functioning) Housewife

And if Trevor would have gone with me his shirt would have said.

Human
And still worth loving.
Since we were in the balcony section of the theater I was not able to video the question and answer portion with Stephenie so if someone else does I'll link it here.

4 comments:

Trena Doll said...

I'm so glad you found your way safely there and back. (I'm especially glad the kids were ok enough that you didn't have to do the martyr-mom thing.) It sounds like an experience you'll remember for years and years. Thanks for sharing.

Susanne said...

AAAAAAAHHHH!!! You are so lucky! (and I love the t-shirt ideas, btw!) :-)

Kathryn Thompson said...

I'm glad it was so fun! Can't wait to finish reading the Host.

Anonymous said...

Good Job!: )