For an early birthday present, Greg took me to the Mall of America for the Stephenie Meyer book signing of her new book, The Host. When I started reading about it, I saw that the books went on sale at 8 am, so I thought we should get to Minneapolis on Monday night. So, as soon as we were done with work, we took off for the cities. It was an uneventful trip and we were tired, so we went to bed shortly after arriving.

 

We got up at 6 am the next morning and got showered and ready to go. We got in line to buy the book at about 7:40 or 7:45. We were about halfway around the circle that the Rotunda forms, we were by the elevators. Once they started selling the books at 8, it took us about an hour to buy the books and get settled. The mall didn't open until 10, so there was really nothing for us to do but read. We didn't bring any chairs along and I thought it would be OK. I was wrong. After about an hour or two of sitting on the floor, I strongly suggested that Greg go on a hunt for one of those camping chairs. My back and butt were killing me and we still had a good 8 hours to go. He found one at Sears for $25. We weren't the only ones that did that. People either bought new ones or had someone bring them some chairs from home.

 

Once I had the chair, I was set but Greg was in and out quite a bit (big shock). I finished the book I was working on and then decided to walk the mall for myself since Greg and come back and appeared that he was ready to sit for a while. I didn't find anything to buy. The mall has changed so much that most of the stores in there are clothing stores. I don't really like shopping for clothes and since I am losing weight, I really don't want to buy a bunch of clothes now that may not fit me in a few months.

 

I sat back in line and was ready to stay there until my book was signed. At about 4 pm, the security guards came around to everyone saying they needed to get as many people in as possible, so anyone with chairs had to pack them up. Greg ran the majority of our stuff to the car then. All we had left were our two books that were to be signed, some water, and my camera. We ended up standing for the remaining 2 hours. Things were so tight it would have been difficult to move around.

 

At about 5:45, the community relations rep for Barnes and Noble came on to let everyone know the rules again and to give an introduction for Stephenie Meyer. She came on and said that she was planning on reading from the book a little and had a presentation but when she heard that we had been standing for so long, she was just going to answer some of the questions that were asked of her. She was nice and funny. It was worth the back pain. There are a lot of videos on YouTube from her Q&A. Check them out.

 

Greg had been stopped by a reporter after his book was signed so I stopped to help him out. I'm not sure where that reporter was from, but she said she stopped him because he was one of the few men in the crowd. It is true that there were only about 15 - 20 men in the crowd of many, many girls and women. We were parked on the 4th floor of the parking garage. We stopped on each floor on the way up to take pictures of the crowd and of Stephenie herself. I got several good pictures of Stephenie during her Q&A. I have them posted to the right. It was 7:45 pm when we were leaving the mall. We headed home right away. It was a long drive. We were already tired and still had over 4 hours of driving. We got home at about midnight and went right to bed.

 

All in all, it was a great time. It was good to learn that I wasn't an adult in a crowd of teenagers. There were lots of people my age and older that loved the books as much as I do. I found a few people that updated their blogs before I did. Here are some links that I found:

 

http://www.twilightlexiconblog.com/?p=899 - Blog of someone that was there. Greg and I are in that first picture of the crowd. In the second row of people, toward the right, there is a woman in a lavender shirt. To the right of her are 2 people in white shirts, one of them in a black chair. That is me in the chair and Greg to the left of me.

 

http://twilightmomsforums.unrealblogs.com/187/stephenie-meyer-at-mall-of-america-i-spy-a-twilightmom/ - TwilightMoms is a group of women that got together because of their love of the Twilight series of books. Check out their story. Good stuff.

 

http://shinyvampireclub.blogspot.com/ - There are a few pictures on this one.