Why I like living in a city

 Wordle 265 4/6*

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Yesterday morning we dropped the kid off at school by car because it was cold. Due to traffic, T. and the kid got out a block from school and walked the rest of the way while I parked. When I was alone, I switched the radio from NPR to a rock station. But it wasn't playing rock, it was some guy talking about recent book bans. The main book was I am Rosa Parks, by Brad Meltzer. We don't have that one, but we have about a dozen more in that series. The kid loves them. I listened a bit more and sure enough, they were talking to the author. In addition to that series and similar kids' books, and involvement in a kids' TV show, he also writes some mysteries/political thrillers for adults, and was having a book signing event to promote one tonight, in the suburbs. (The Barnes & Noble in Tyson's Corner, specifically, if anyone cares.)

Work didn't add to the craziness, and I got on top of addressing stuff from recent days, more or less. This involved a lot of detective work about where a certain document came from. Going from file metadata and general analysis of the text, to clues stored in the Global Address List, to searching for names in combination with document types in several different places and piecing together what it all means, until I was 90 percent certain that a document came from outside our contract. In theory I could have just asked the subject matter expert a simple yes or no question to get a definite answer. I'm not sure if the detective work was an irrational avoidance of conflict and personal distaste for that SME, or a rational reaction to the fact that she's hard to get useful information out of. After work I meant to go grocery shopping but got squeezed for time. The kid had music lessons, like usual. And then, instead of going home, we went to the book signing.

Getting there was aggravating. There's no good way to get from DC to Virginia during rush hour. And we got there at an awkward time, about half an hour before it was supposed to start - too late to get really good seats or have a proper meal first, but early enough that we still had to wait quite a while. And T. was distracted because it coincided with a school board meeting. (Sounds very messy.) She was on the phone the whole time listening in. 

The talk was good. A little discussion of the new novel, a little discussion of book bans (modern politics is scary), a little discussion of his general process. After the talk we had to wait for about an hour to actually get the signatures. Just to make things a little crazier, somehow the kid lost the book she most wanted to get signed. Luckily she had a spare. (Long story.) She was sitting up front with other kids, our of my direct sight, and halfway through the talk she came back to me, crawling under store shelves, to ask for my help. We never found it. My best guess is that it wound up in another kid's pile by mistake. While waiting for our books to get signed, in addition to dealing with that, T. and I took turns holding our space in line while we took the kid to the bathroom, got her some juice, and just watched her run around, hopefully not bothering other people too much. 

In the end we got 5 books of hers personally signed, probably 3 new and 2 we already had, and I bought the book he was hyping, signed but not personalized. After that we went to dinner at a restaurant we've been to before around the corner in the mall. It was fine. Looks fancier than the food justifies but the food certainly isn't bad. The kid got to bed almost 2 hours late and we went to bed right after that ourselves. 

Musing

Despite all the waiting and hassle and multitasking, and how late we were out, I'm glad we went. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing but the kid got to meet one of her favorite authors and learn a little more about how books are made. Aside from the kid, I think I'll enjoy the book I got, when I finally get around to it. 

Early in the pandemic I mentioned how lots of features of city life had become problematic or just vanished. This is the kind of thing I missed. If we lived in the suburbs, doing something like that would have been a lot harder (if we lived closer to Tyson's Corner specifically, going to that specific event would have been easier, but that's a gamble). If we lived where my parents or T.'s parents lived it would have been just impossible.