HE WROTE: Day Four Retrospective From Day Five

So here’s the day four summary. Woke. Went and worked out. Almost choked. Went to breakfast. Jenny and I talked seriously about something, I forget what. Might have been the next book. Jenny hung the Do Not Disturb sign on her door so we could do a phone interview in Jenny’s room with a newspaper where we finished each other’s sentences. As I walked out of her room, a woman I never met before said “Hi Bob”. Turns out she was the conference director, probably wondering why I was walking out of Jenny’s room at 11:30 in the morning where the Do Not Disturb sign was on the door.

Then we sat in this sun room on the seventh floor working on the keynote we give Saturday morning. We’re going to use my three steps for rule breaking. So I said, “Fine let’s use the three steps,” because I am a simple soul, a monk sort of, one at peace with the universe and squirrels. Jenny said, “Good, and let’s use the three steps over three areas.”
So we scribbled and war-gamed. And we ended up with two completely different speeches of course. One with three steps with three sub-areas. And with three areas with three steps inside each.
So we’re sitting in the same place and as soon as I finish this entry we will try again. We’re not leaving until we have something.

Where was I? Yesterday. So, Jenny was whining about the cold. And how she needed a coat. And how she wanted to go to Filene’s. You know, the Filene’s whose sign she could see from the highway when she couldn’t see the hotel sign even though it was closer. So she’s saying this and I started choking again. Because even as she’s speaking I’m looking out the window and the F and I of Filene’s are gone and there’s a guy in a crane removing the L. Really. Truly. It’s the Jenny curse.

So we went to Macy’s. Well she went to Macy’s. I went to a luggage store. The woman asked me if she could help. I said, “Nah, I’m waiting on some dame buying a coat.” But I actually bought a lime green luggage tag.
But could Jenny buy just one coat? Nooooo. She bought two. Cause they were on sale. Right.

Anyway. We wandered around the mall, which for me is we walked too slowly toward the exit. Although we did sign our stock in the mall bookstore.
The person in the Easter Bunny suit did approach a little too closely and I got tense.

Back at the hotel we met two Cherries, Katy and Corrina, for sodas in the hotel lobby while waiting for our local escort, no, not that kind of escort, geez you guys. Ginny shows up and begins to show us a good time. No, not that kind of good time. We left the hotel around 2:00 and got back at 10:30. We hit, no, not that kind of hit, around a dozen of so stock signings and one book signing.

We knew we were going to be ok and were in capable hands when Ginny didn’t drive down Spleen. We went all over Boston. Back alleys. Ginny exchanged money with shady characters. I think she runs moonshine on the side. But everyone knew her. She got us where we needed to be. We signed books. Lots of books. We got our technique down. Jenny starts signing the DLD’s. I run all over the store and grab our backlist books. Jenny’s are easy: Crusie. I have to find my Doherty books in various places. The curious thing is there appear to be a lot more of my Area 51 books out there from Dell which is very good news. So I stagger back to where Jenny is signing with both arms full of books, then have to explain that, yes, even though I am co-signing Mayer, in another life, I am Doherty (my mother’s maiden name).

The exciting part of all this was that in every store I set of the security beeper going in and coming out. Either my jeans (which Jenny and Ginny—try saying those names fast five times in a row—voted for) or my sweater were setting them off. This was not fun. I kept getting stopped. Ginny kept saying: “Well make him take off those jeans.” Ginny. What a card. Jenny kept saying: “Well, he’s from the Bronx, you know.” People in Boston really love people from the Bronx. I’d have to explain that, although from the Bronx, I’ve never set foot inside Yankee Stadium. I actually started to think Ginny had a little buzzer thing in her trenchcoat pocket she pushed every time I went through the doors and it set off the buzzer, but a couple of times she had to wait in the car downtown while we ran in so that blew that theory.

When we were driving past MIT, I wanted her to stop so I could run in and solve a theorem or two on a blackboard but I probably would have gotten it wrong, but something like DLD=FUN should have worked, eh?

One time she started apologizing for making a wrong turn and we were like “We wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t have told us. We did Speen street six times before we noticed.”

Then the booksigning. I tried, Needles. I really tried. I put Jenny off-stage. Behind a rack off books. Sitting down. Out of sight. And she still wouldn’t SHUT UP. This voice would echo across the book store as I tried to speak. Those who were there will back me up on this.

But it went well. I think.

But now we must write a keynote. Update our YEX and violence talk. And the Filenes sign is completely gone so I should have Jenny’s complete attention. Thank you to Ginny for being so nice and getting us around Boston and not throwing us out on Speen street and all the bookstore employees for not throwing me in jail for setting off the alarms and especially the staff and the signing last night.