Saturday night we headed to our local social, and as usual had a really good time. But, we noticed something seemed a little off... it was a little bit us and a little bit something else. Pet has not been feeling well, we are thinking (and kind of hoping) that it's his turn for his gallblader to go out. By hoping, we are hoping it's nothing worse. So even though he's not been 100% lately he was feeling ok and we went to the party anyway.

Actually, if there was ever a day to skip out this weekend would have been it. He's been dealing with this stomach issue for about 2 weeks, plus his car's been making some weird noises. So Sat. morning he gets up and takes his car in thinking he'll get the transmission serviced. Then he finds out that they can't do it (where he took it) so they put it back together and he heads home to find it's acting up worse. Did they forget to connect something or what? So he comes home gets me and we head back over there. They look at it, a guy rides around with us and the end result is that maybe there was air in the lines. The original complaint is still there but the car has to go to the dealer because the jiffy lube didn't have the necessary equipment to work on Pet's car. While he was out the first time I discovered that my printer decided to die... it's wireless which is awesome, but now no printer. So after we finally get his car taken care of (more or less) we grab a late lunch (at this point it's around 2:30). We were actually originally slated to help set up for the party, but that was already well underway, so we decided to stop by Office Depot and look at printers. Next thing we know it's after 4pm and we are supposed to be at the hotel by 7. So we headed back home to figure out what I was going to wear to "Lady in Red" night.

It wasn't Red.... We barely managed to get out of the house and get there on time, grabbed a hotel room (one of the last King beds they had), and got our space saved and hung up a few banners for the new book. I wasn't planning to do an actual "signing" at this party, I'm doing that next month. But, enough people knew about the book and had told me they wanted one at THIS party that I had them ready to go. Once the party got started I was running back and forth delivering and signing books, saying hello to old friends and new, etc. Pet seemed to be his usual self but when I caught up with him later I found out he wasn't feeling all that well.

It seemed to be a weird night all around. Very little dancing (which is odd for this group) and not as much mixing and mingling as we usually see either. We were both still moving around a lot and talking to people but it just seemed a little off. When we'd looked at the signup list we noticed a very high proportion of out-of-towners and newbies signed up for this party. It seems that word of mouth is spreading very well that this is a great party, so we are getting more and more folks from surrounding states and all the way down to Mobile... actually I saw one couple signed up from Destin FL. When we were talking about it today we couldn't help but wonder if that high proportion of non-regulars threw the balance off a little bit.

That brought up another discussion between the two of us, of how that might just be what causes some clubs to seem clicky. The truth is they aren't clicky at all, but rather no one knows anyone and since there aren't enough locals circulating, there's not enough crowd movement overall so that it looks like people are just sticking with their friends. In fact, their "friends" may just be those people they happened to sit at a table with (and may be people they've never met before that night).

All that said, it was a fun night, I was really and honestly surprised at the reception the book received overall. But, mostly, it was just really great to see our friends again and to talk to everyone. There were a lot of really cool people that we were able to talk to... and a few strange ones... but that's another story.