First Book Signing in Two Years

I actually made it to two book signings in February.  Today, I'm just going to talk about the first one.

It was near the beginning of February, and it was for Gregg Hurwitz's newest Orphan X novel.  (Which I, sadly, haven't read yet).  It was at the bookstore in Santa Monica where he has had all the launches for this series.  One difference, however, is we were outdoors the entire time, except for buying the book.  It's been cold in the past, but we were having a warm spell, and it was quite pleasant to be down there outside even as darkness fell.

I headed down after work, and I was fortunate to make good time getting down there.  As a result, I was able to snag dinner at the BBQ place across the street from the bookstore before.  I like the place, and I was glad to see it was still in business.

The book signing itself was fun as always.  I really do want to get to the book soon.

It had been two years since last book signing, and it was nice to go to one again.  Sadly, even during normal times, I don't seem to be able to get to too many.  I really miss them.

Muddy Dash - 2022

I've started out the year with another mud run!  I was back at Irvine Lake (although a different company was putting it on).  This time it was a Muddy Dash.  Again, I signed up last minute, and again, I did it because it was a great deal.  There was just a little bit of fees, etc., but not the normal costs.

The other reason I signed up last minute was weather.  Since you never know what kind of weather you will get in February, I don't like to sign up months in advance.  But I signed up about a week out, and the weather was looking like it was going to be perfect.  It was.

I went with my friends Rory and Cameron.  Despite the great deal to sign up when we did, it was pretty empty.  We hardly had any wait to get our stuff, and there didn't seem to be many people on the course.  The good news was, we didn't have to wait at obstacles this time.

And yes, there was mud.  No mud we had to crawl through, but there was some thick mud we had to walk through at times.

However, the course seemed short.  It was supposed to be a 5K, but it felt more like two miles.  Unless there was a part of the course we missed, that is.  But I sure didn't see anything like that.

They had hoses for us to clean up with afterwards.  I'd bought some water in case they didn't, but it turned out we didn't need it.  However, they only had five of them, and the lines were long.  That was the longest line we were in all day.

The weather was wonderful.  We've been having wind here at home, but down there we had no wind.  It was upper 70's.  Perfect weather for being outside and getting muddy.

My friends didn't seem that impressed.  They are looking for harder obstacles.  I do wish the course had been longer and we'd had to crawl through mud at some point, but overall, I was happy with it.