BEA Day 3

The first thing I did on Saturday was get a book signed by James Van Praagh. He did not pass along any messages for me from the other side.

I also very nearly got to meet R. L. Stine, to get a book signed for my boss's son, as one of my menial internly duties. Unfortunately for me and fortunately for the son, he managed to get the kid in to meet the author himself. R. L. Stine and the other really big names had ticketed lines, which were free but you had to sign up early. The boy was ecstatic about meeting him, which was cool. I wish I had gotten to meet one of my favorite authors at that age.

By Saturday, I was getting the hang of this BEA thing. I spent most of the time hanging out at the booth with the VRG people talking to random passersby about vegetarianism and occasionally pointing someone wanting to do business in my boss's direction (I can't talk about business deals that aren't complete yet, but this year's BEA landed VRG some exciting contacts--I don't know if it's always like this, but it was pretty cool). Whenever my feet stopped hurting or a cool signing opened up I'd go take a walk. I loved looking at the other booths and seeing what books or items they had on display. I carried around a little notebook where I wrote down the names of all the interesting titles. Most of them aren't published yet, which is great for my wallet because I might forget by the time they come out.

On one of these walks I stopped to get My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent. It's a story about a teenage banshee. I haven't opened this book yet, but I love it already just because it's about a banshee. Who writes about banshees? Awesome people, that's who. I was standing in line between two people who were having a conversation over my head. One of them apologized for it to me, and somehow that led into a conversation about the food at the conference (gross and overpriced). I pointed to my name tag and said how awful it was for the vegans in my group. It turned out she was a vegetarian! Her name is Sharon, and she was at the BEA because she has a book-review blog, Sharon Loves Books and Cats. You should check out her blog, because she's cool and she discussed YA books with me while I was suffering from some serious fiction deprivation. Sharon and I got our books signed, and then I took her back to our booth so she could pick up some of our materials.

There were a surprising number of vegetarian-themed books being signed at the show. The most exciting (and the only one I picked up) was Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. She is the author of Veganomicon and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. In other words, she is the Goddess of vegan baking. And she made cookies for the signing. I ate a cookie baked by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. You know you're jealous.

After the show closed for the night, L took us out for Indian food. Up until this point, the only Indian food I had ever had were my university's samosas and the stuff I got at Whole Foods on Thursday. I was pretty excited to try it, because everyone I know who eats Indian loves it. (At this point, I'm sure all the people from home who are reading this are like "Who is this person and what did she do to Rachael?" I didn't go all the way to Baltimore and New York with a vegetarian group to be picky. If it makes you feel any better--Rachel--, I have a loaf of bread in the cupboard that I am forcing down my throat because it turns out that even in Baltimore I don't like bread.) Anyway, I was not disappointed. I let them know that I was leery about spicy food, but I went ahead and tried this onion thing that everyone was avoiding and it wasn't that spicy! Even for my new adventurous-eater self, it's a bit disconcerting to be liking food that other people won't touch. Maybe an alien has taken over my body. I've been craving Indian food ever since. A couple of days ago I went to Googlemaps to look up Indian restaurants near my home. Imagine a circle. Imagine my house at the center of this circle. The radius is about forty-five minutes to an hour drive. That's where all the Indian restaurants were, in clusters at the diameter of the circle and beyond. I live in Indian no-man's-land. This does not surprise me one bit, and of course it explains very well why I have never tried this cuisine before.

Just typing this is making me hungry. I should end this post now, so I can sleep and dream about Indian food.