SCBWI Seattle

I always miss it before I'm even gone. Driving across the 520 bridge, passing the University of Washington...Mt. Rainier off in the distance...I totally took that all for granted when I lived there.

So it was pretty fantastic to combine my favorite place with my favorite kind of people--my family and my writer friends. Speaking of fabulous writer friends, here I am with Jolie Stekly and Sara Easterly.

And what great planning on the part of Laurie Thompson and those amazing SCBWI Western Washington people. Besides having an incredible conference, they

planted a cupcake place right across the street!

There's my partner-in-cupcake crime, Jolie Stekly (www.cuppajolie.blogspot.com)!

And I finally got my hands on a copy of my pal, Suzanne Young's, THE NAUGHTY LIST. They were all sold out at the SCBWI New York conference.

The person in

front of me in the bookstore line got the LAST copy! I told Suzanne I was going to have to get all Cabbage Patch Doll/Tickle-Me-Elmo ugly if it happened again. I had on my running shoes and I was prepared to use my Karate skills...

I always have a great time seeing Jay Asher. His amazing book, THIRTEEN REASONS WHY has now been on the New York Times list for 58 weeks!

It was so great to see Holly Cupola again. I

can't wait to get my hands on her new book, TELL ME A SECRET. It is arriving very soon!

And I always learn something new from Mitali Perkins . I have now gotten the opportunity to hear her speak on both coasts and I am so impressed with her generosity when it comes to the kidlit community!

I wish I could have spent more time with Joni Sensel, Jaime Temarik and Kim Baker! The last time I saw Jaime and Kim, we were fending off frostbite, searching for the perfect cupcake on a very frigid New York night! More support for the belief that true happiness is only a good book and a cupcake away...

Go Ahead and MadMen Yourself

So I've got a million things to do this morning, but my friend, Shelagh, had to go and give me the link to MadMen myself...

http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/madmenyourself/

Okay...definitely worth it. You get to pick your hair and all your accessories and whatnot. It reminded me of when my friend had this really great Barbie fashion designer stencil set...but you had to set up the stencils very carefully, because any false move to the left or right, and Barbie's design would become Project Runway gone very wrong...

I'm looking at the clock right now, because I think there still may be time to go do my makeup like my MadMen self. I opted out of the cigarette accessory, for obvious reasons-- Barbie's stencil set never had the cigarette or martini option. When I watch the show and think back to that time, I'm always amazed at how everyone thought they had to smoke--like they would be social pariahs if they didn't during that era. They had such great clothes in the fifties and sixties. Didn't they ever think about how bad they would smell, along with their impeccably styled hair?

And I would love to have that hair. It took forever to make that perfect up-do every morning, I'm sure. My mom was always up with the latest fashions, but she was the mother of three and very busy. I'm sure she didn't have the time to properly do her MadMen era hairdo justice. Being the fashion-forward time-saving mom that she was, she solved that problem. She had a wiglet. Not a wig. A wiglet. It was pretty amazing. I used to take it out of the cupboard under the bathroom sink and bobby pin it to my hair. It looked a bit like a swatch of frosted chinchilla hair, but it was very cool. There's many a bad-hair day that I wish I had a wiglet of my own.

In my next life, I will wear hose and heels everyday and have a job in the steno pool...but then again, maybe not...