Saturday, October 16, 2010

Damn That Betty White!

Old Rodan in the middle of a predicament.

Back from a none-too-profitable but all-too-entertaining book-signing event in Williamsburg, VA, this weekend. Drove up last night from Greensboro, working in a number of geocaches along the way...of course. East of Petersburg, it's a gorgeous drive along Route 5. One of the highlights was stopping for a cache at an excellent little tavern in Charles City (which is one of the four or five buildings in town, I think). It was full of character, and I had one seriously good cowburger. In fact, after that, I don't know that I'll be able to eat a McDonald's cowburger ever again.

Stayed at a cheap but decent hotel very near the college bookstore (and several caches, which is important). And today at the signing, I met up with a passel of very good friends—Beth Massie, Cortney Skinner, Tom Monteleone, Matthew Warner, Beth Blue, Sarah Schoenfeld, and Mark Sieber—and met Mark's friend Laura Long and writer Ron Malfi for the first time. Things were slow...to say the least...but when the caching team of emvirginia (Ms. Massie & Mr. Skinner) and Damned Rodan headed out to claim a nearby cache, we discovered just what was up.

Betty White had stolen our entire audience.

Yep, they were all out there—thousands of muggles, all waiting for Betty White, who was in town to do a benefit for her animal rescue program. She was set to make a big entrance riding in a carriage and then do a presentation/autograph session at one of the businesses on the square. We even figured maybe we could get Betty to hawk some horror novels for us, and we'd cut her in on a percentage. Alas, we never got to see Betty White; when we were outside, she was in, and when we were inside, she was out. Or something to that effect. At any rate, she didn't sell any horror novels for us. Conversely, we didn't autograph any Christmas ornaments, so really, whose loss is it?

Yep.

Ms. Massie, a little too happy.

Mark Sieber and Laura Long, also too happy.
Matt, Ron, and Tom, suitably somber.

Malfi and old dude, once again all too happy but laughing at muggles.

Damned Rodan and Emvirginia, posing with Thomas Jefferson and
some Betty White muggles. Yeah. Too happy.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's with all this freaky happiness?? Yikes! I know, Betty's overly cheerful aura had drifted down Duke O' Gloucester Street like some kind of bizarrely cheerful fog and had affected us. Fun day, though. :) Wait. I mean :(

Stephen Mark Rainey said...

Far too many smiles happening. Gak.