Stories, Photographs, Recipes, and More Straight from the Dirty South: Book Signing last night

I had an interesting time last night. I have a blog I love to read- Pioneer Woman (fabulous food and photography sections as well as great writing) - and she happened to come in to Atlanta last night for her cookbook signing. From what I read on her website the book signing was supposed to start at 7:30. I think to myself if I get there at 7:30 maybe I will wait in line for about an hour or so; that is all it should take. Umm.... oh so wrong. I got there at 7:00 and walked in to Borders - they were handing out wristbands. My wristband color was green H. The lady says they are on Orange C so look around it will be a little while. I go upstairs to scout things out and realize that the place is packed at with fans. I also notice that tons of people have on orange wristbands "Ruh Roh". I grab a seat and observe. What I observe is not good. Ree was awesome and talking to every fan- fabulous but that line was moving oh so slow. Time went by fairly fast after I saw some people I new and talked to them for a bit. I realized it was now 9:30 pm and they were only at Orange G ( going up to I). Wow- maybe it will move quicker I thought. Nope. By this time I was in it for the long hall. I had already spent hours waiting, if I left it would be all for naught. I stayed only to get my book signed at 11:45. Wow- never knew a signing could be like that. The crazy thing is that Ree came in early at 6 pm and started signing. The poor woman had to be worn out. I could only imagine how bad her hand was cramping, signing all those books. I just remember when signing my life away on my house my hand being worn out and I only signed about 50 times or so. I think I noticed her take one break the whole time.. and if she was like me she never had dinner. When I finally met her it was pretty quick- I forgot my camera so no picture and I just spoke with her for a moment. She was very nice in person and despite her not digging the brown hair- I thought it looked great. I wound up bringing her the last of the Atlanta-specific photo coasters and a jar of pepper jelly. Unfortunately the coasters were the first batch and we have since figured out how to improve upon them. I feel bad that she got the shoddy project ones- oh well. I also feel sort of weird because I gave her the skyline, the Varisty, the Fox Theatre, and the Clermont Lounge ones. I am sure she will probably trash them but I thought the Clermont is much a part of Atlanta as the Fox Theatre and she can always pass the "racier" ones on. All in all it was a good time and went by semi-quickly due to meeting new people. I met a woman who had kids my age and I gave her advice based on her children's perspective on things. I also met some girls from Tennessee who had driven 4 hours to see PW just to drive back that night in order to take final exams today - Craziness. The thing that angered me was seeing men sit in the rare chairs and bench's that were about. There were pregnant women, mothers, and older woman all over and these men just sat there in their chairs not offering their seats. I am all for feminism but isn't it proper for a man to always give up their seat for a woman? or am I just old fashioned in that regard?

Since I have no pictures of the night, instead I am going to post pictures of life in Atlanta. PW lives on a ranch and constantly documents that life. Since I live in a big city I will post some pictures that document my um-PW like life.