Saturday, January 15, 2005

Not Just Another Book Signing...Part One

I knew it was going to be a good day when work called and said, “Hey! It’s slow today so why don’t you take the day off.” Oh yeah, more time to play poker before Wil’s book signing later in the evening. I signed up for a free roll and lasted a whole seven minutes. Definitely a new record but I deserved it. I have a hard time letting go of big pocket pairs and, this time, it came back to bite me in the ass. A valuable lesson learned for free. I then decided to hit the low limit tables over at Paradise. I spent the morning losing but in the afternoon I got back up to end the day even. Not bad considering the reckless play at the .10/.20 tables.

Before long it was time to get ready for the book signing. I gathered up my copy of Just a Geek and headed over to pick up Maura. We were taking the train and needed to catch one of two trains that would get us to the city with time to spare. We ended up on the second train thanks to a coin jam-up in the parking ticket machine that forced Maura to walk to the farther machine to get our ticket. The ride to SF was uneventful and we pulled into our stop on time, caught a taxi to Union Square, and arrived at the bookstore at 6:30pm.

Upon entering the bookstore my phone rang. It turned out to be my father. He had forgotten that I had plans and was calling to find out where I was. (Yes, I live at home. I can’t afford any other arrangement right now.) My dad was asking me who was at the book signing and that’s when I first saw him…..Wil Wheaton was standing, not more then ten feet away, speaking with the manager of the bookstore. I quickly ended the phone call and took a good look at the object of my teenage crush and realized that he looked much better in person then he ever did on TV wearing those horrible Starfleet uniforms. But there was something beyond his physical appearance….A sparkle in his eyes maybe…Some intangible something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Something that would become obvious as the evening wore on.

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