Cupcakes and college professors

I rounded off the week with two more book appearances following my first appearance at Barnes and Noble on pub day. 

On Wednesday night, I traveled to Suffield, CT to spend the evening with the good folks at Kent Memorial Library.  It was a sizable audience of enthusiastic readers, many of whom had already read SOMETHING MISSING and were anxious to read UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO.  The introduction that I received was second to none (citing many of the oddities from my life and confirming to me that some people read this blog with great regularity) and the questions that I received from the audience were varied and thought-provoking, ranging from my writing process to my thoughts on standardized testing of elementary school children.     

And best of all were these cupcakes, which were cute and tasty.  

On Thursday night my wife and I were off to RJ Julia, one of my favorite bookstores in the world.  There was a time when we would routinely drive the hour down to Madison just to browse the store and walk away with a book or two, but the last time we made the trip, we had Clara with us, who can now walk and tear books off the shelf. 

I fear that our browsing days are over for a while. 

It was a small crowd at RJ Julia, but amongst the attendees was one of my former college professors, whom I did not initially recognize.  She arrived bearing gifts: two recommendation letters that she had written for me in 1996 that helped me gain admission to Trinity College and be named as one of USA Today’s Academic All Americans.  Though she had sent these letters to their respective parties years ago, I had never seen them myself.  They are quite nice. 

Best of all, she described me to everyone present as “one of the most gracious and giving students she’s ever known.”

I assume she’s confusing me with someone else, but it was still nice to hear.