  Finally I tore myself away from mindless weekend-type things long enough to blog of my most adventures weekend. I have edited much of the typed-out squealing and removed the excessive exclamation points. Sarah Vowell has been an object of fanatical adoration for the last year or so. I saw her reading exerts from The Partly Cloudy Patriot on my beloved C-Span, and consequently became obsessed. I love her for her unabashed nerdiness (involvement in political e-mail groups, public radio, marching band) I love that in reading her work relays her points just as eloquently as reading her work does.
And her subject matter! Historical battle sites, the Chelsea Hotel, Bozeman, Montana. She writes with perfect effectiveness and smartness. She is witty, real, self-effacing without self-pity or doubt, talented. Her words are nearly musical; they way she strings sentences together in a sort of perfect rhythm. As part of the GetLit festival in Cheney and Spokane, she was coming to read. Robin, Jamie, and I piled into the car and headed for the closet college-town, some twenty minuets away. We listened to a mixed CD I had given Robin, blasting They Might Be Giants with the windows down at freeway speed.
It was the sort of strange serenity that can only be achieved when attending a book reading on a Friday night. I mean, my peers were out getting shit-faced, and I was going to sit in a lecture hall, grasping my hardcover book with the same intensity that they were gulping down beer bongs. We picked a row towards the front and settled into wooden, uncomfortable folding chairs. I tried to remain patient throughout the opening acts (cynical poetry and Polynesian fiction, anyone?
) In turning the head in a overdone yawn I saw her. Sarah Vowell was sitting six people away from me ! In the same row!! Like, with us simpletons. Her ! Sarah! I kept glancing over in fashion I thought was casual, but was actually pretty obvious because it didn’t take long until she toke notice. She leaned forward in her seat, stared back at me. In sheer embarrassment, I grew red and turned away. And she laughed . At me . I made her laugh. Out loud. The man sitting next to her waved at me sarcastically the next time I looked over and several other people laughed.
Eventually she trotted up to the podium and began her reading. All I can describe it as is sheer bliss. Here’s a brief example of the glory in which she writes. “ If I had to nail down the objective of my historical tourism, it’s probably to collect evidence in support of my motto. And my motto, in any situation is, “It Could Be Worse.” It Could Be Worse is how I meet every setback. Though nothing all that bad has ever happened to me, every time I have had my hart broken or gotten fired or watched an audience member at one of my readings have a seizure as I stand at the podium trying not to cry, I remind myself that it could be worse. In my self-help universe I whisper mantras myself, mantras like “Andersonville” or “Texas School Book Depository”. “Andersonville” is code for “You could be one of the prisoners of war dying of disease and malnutrition in the worst Confederate prison, so just calm down about the movie you wanted to see being sold out.
“Texas School Book Depository” means that having the delivery guy forget the guacamole isn’t nearly as bad as being assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald as the blood from your head stains your wife’s pink suit. ” After her reading a Q and A session erupted, in which everyone around me asked stupid questions about her ‘typical days’ and about her wheat allergy.
I wanted to ask a question, but was had recently become deaf in ecstasy. Then the book signing! I don’t really know how best to explain just exactly what it’s like to meet your hero. It’s sort of better than you imagined, only you feel more light-headed and dreamlike. It was incredible. I was wearing thrift-store heels, fake patent-leather streetwalker shoes that I love. She made a noise and cooed, “I looove those shoes!” I nearly lost it. I told her, stupidly, that I was a fan. “Oh, hi, FAN .” She was superb. I told her how much her writing inspired me, and how it had opened me up to all sort of things. Politics, music, public radio, essay writing. I know I must have sounded like the idiot I am, talking too fast and gushing about minor details. But it didn’t seem to matter that I had a squeaky voice or that I was so nervously compelled by her. It was just… wonderful. Affectionately… Anna 
