Mom and I went to visit Shelley and Garret and the second part of our reason for going to Decatur was to also travel on up to Champaign, IL where my friend, John Everson, horror author, was doing a book signing at the Illini Union Bookstore on campus.
The day started out fine. We decide what we would have for supper, went to the store and bought all of the stuff. Then we went to Steak N Shake for some lunch. Garret fell asleep in the car, so we just got our food at the drive up and headed for Champaign. Once we got there, we had plenty of time before the book signing, so we stopped at a Burger King and got some food for Garret. He was too busy playing with some other kids that were there to eat, but we enjoyed watching them.
So far so good.
We asked a lady at Burger King where the Illini bookstore was and she gave us directions. We found it with no problem and got a good parking spot too, even though it was quite a walk for mom. We got to the store and found out it was the wrong one. We had to walk two more blocks and found the bookstore we were looking for. John Everson was in the 'Author's corner'. Garret was enjoying pulling all of the books off of the shelves, and we were putting them back as quickly as we could. He wanted to run because it was a big place, but we had to hang onto him....he was not happy! I guess he was not into the books for reading purposes that day........ Finally it was time for the reading by John of the first two chapters of his book "Covenant". Mom came in and sat by me and and Shelley sat in the back next to John's wife and their son, Shawn. Shawn was about the same age as Garret. In the end they played together some. However, Shelley had to leave and take Garret for a walk because he was being a little monster, throwing himself down on the floor and screaming, because he could not run around like a crazy little person. Finally, she had enough and plopped him into my lap. John was done reading by now and was taking questions. Garret smiled and waved at John who said he was cute and waved back at him....Finally I was able to have John sign a copy of his book for me, and we had our picture taken together. I had talked to him for a short time before the reading began, and he was very nice and a really great guy. Afterward he asked if we were going out to dinner, I would have loved to sat and talked to him for a while, but we had to head back to Shelley's. Cary was expecting us, he had been gone on a business trip for a couple of days...well, actually, he forgot we were going anywhere and called his mom before we got back and asked her "Where is my wife?"....:-) Anyway, back to the book store. There were some journalism students there doing a project for their class. Three of them interviewed me, since I was the only one there who had read any of John's books. The whole time I am manhandling Garret. He was insane. I don't know how many time he threw a hissy fit on the floor before we got out of there. Shelley went and got the car and picked us up in front of the bookstore. Even though Garret was being a little hellion, we had to laugh when we got in the car. He wanted out of his car seat, I told him he was not getting out until he was 25! Garret may be a monster for Halloween, a lovable monster, but a monster...lol.....We had lots of laughs despite everything, and got lost in Champaign trying to find our way out. We took the tour, so to speak. Finally, we got home, we all cooked dinner and made tarimasu for dessert. Marsha and Christine joined us. That polish sausage, kraut and fried taters was so yummy, but the tarimasu was wonderful. We all went to bed at 9:30.
Above are a couple of pictures of John reading from his book "Covenant" and one of us together with him holding my autographed book.
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