Hi everyone!
I'm sitting here in the lobby of Los Angeles's Farmer's Daughter hotel, looking out on a lobby strung with twinkling lights, listening to Etta James-style jazz and trying to measure exactly how tired I am. It's that bone-deep, heavy limb, eyeball-straining kind of tired, that only occurs after big events have run their course. After the Las Vegas podcst was such a success, and the recording of the official Scholastic are now complete, tonight will be like taking a well-deserved sleep after a fabulous adventure.
Not that it's all over: we do have our big - and I mean BIG - New York podcast on Wednesday. We're getting to see Jo - JO - on Tuesday night. And when I go home tomorrow, Moochka will be waiting for me. My mom tells me her tail is as long as her body now.
She's not the only one I miss; I was worried, when we booked our Vegas travel, that eight days with the Muggle boys would result in such overload that I'd break out in hives or, well, simply kill one of them...however, I have had more fun with that group of geeky, sweet, wonderful boys in the past week than in most other weeks of my life. Vegas was as successful as it was because our original suspicions were correct: We really do love each other, and hanging out together only yields the kind of goofiness and laughter that makes lifelong memories. They're almost all already back on the East Coast, and here in sunny, chill, flowerful, bright Los Angeles, it's not the same without random screams of "OHHHH, KEVIN!" or the worry over what - ahem - colorful message I'd find taped to my bedroom door next.
And the podcast... OK, yeah, we trounced MuggleNet. No one is more surprised about this than I; Emerson keeps saying that he's shocked we didn't think we would win. I had NO idea that Nick Rhein ws such a trivia god - and Susan, damn! I was glad to have gotten one question right, but that WICKED question nerly killed me. I knew the answer and wasn't on the panel, so had to cover my mouth and step on my foot and do a dance that only made me look like I needed the bathroom, to stop myself from saying it and therefore cheating.
Anyway, the last leg of this all commences tomorrow, when I'll be testing JUST how much I really do love those MuggleBoys, as they'll all be staying at my apartment. Thank goodness for air conditioning.
I feel like I've met more of you in the past week than I will for a long, long time. If I did, thank you for your support and your nice words. I've met so many Fitties, and that itself is a huge source of inspiration to me. You've given me coffee, and drawings of myself, and magnets with cats on them, and buttons with PotterCast phrases, and boxes of goodies designed to keep a girl vacationing with MuggleBoys sane, and such amazing cards with such heartfelt messages inside. A few of you even pulled me aside to express some very personal but nonetheless touching sentiments - you know who you are, and I can't begin to express how overwhelming and awe-inspiring it is, to me, that you would feel the need to say such things. I've met so many people this week with whom I'd love to be friends, that I'm actually sad that maintaining such friendships would be as big of a job as Leaky itself. If we don't get to say it loud enough, or often enough, we appreciate you all to the Nth degree, and can't wait to meet you over, and over, and over again.
See you soon!
