The weather in Tucson is going to be so gorgeous this weekend–sunny with a  high around 85. Actually, when you track down the Sisters, you can be assured that we’ll be complaining that we’re hot.

And you will want to track us down. It won’t be hard.

All weekend we’ll be at the following booth: The Dreams Convention, Booth #106. It’s right by the Student Union. We’ll have books to sell.

If you’re more keen on hearing one of us speak then you can join Amylynn at a talk.

Book Boyfriends

What is it about certain heroes that make the reader fall in love with them? NYT best-selling author Larissa Ione and multi-published authors Shelley Coriell, Candace Havens, and Amylynn Bright share their insights.

Koffler Room 216 (Seats 89, Wheelchair accessible)  
Sat, Mar 14, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

My Honey had a gig this weekend. We shipped the kids to Grandma’s house and I put a bunch of make up on. I was in a great mood, kinda full of vinegar, and ready to have fun. Since I don’t get out much anymore I was excited to see old friends and, in a moment of complete lunacy, I had three beers. Crazy, right?

Only some things went awry straight off. At this particular venue you have to show ID to get into the 21 and over area where the actual bar is. I approached the bouncer, ID in hand. He didn’t look at it; he simply grabbed my hand and marked an X on it.

“You didn’t look at my ID,” I said.

He shrugged.

“Hey!” I pointed at the X on my right hand. “This is an old lady X. I’m not an old lady. Look at my damn ID.”

He squinted at me but I shoved my ID at him and made him look, because being 45 sucks, and I like to pretend that I look under 21.

Good times proceeded.

Then just as I was about to leave, one of my husband’s oldest friends came up to me.

He touched my shoulder and smiled. “Congratulations on the baby.”

I blinked. “Which one? The 9 year-old or the 11 year-old?”

His face fell. Which was probably best because I was considering clawing it off.

“I must have you confused with someone else,” he said. He’d better be super, duper drunk.

At that point, I decided it was time to take my old, fat ass home. I probably won’t need a sitter for the next gig.

This morning did not start well. A little boy forgot his homework and his mother broke the cardinal rule of fetching it for him. Of course she wasn’t notified until she was already half way across town. The reason she broke the rule was because his having detention was terrifically inconvenient for her. Don’t worry, she left a very mean note for him with the teacher. Since she was already absurdly late for work, she decided a bagel and Starbucks would make things better. It totally would have, too, except that the chick who made the bagel was in training–or so said the button on her apron–and it took her approximately 27 minutes to spread cream cheese. Then coffee was spilled on a pink sweater. A Raw Sugar packet was dropped into a Venti Latte and had to be fished out. Now her coffee tastes vaguely of paper. No matter how funny these things are today, the cloud has settled. Go ahead – laugh your ass off. Here we go.

1. The main reason we’re not going to Mumbai. There are probably a bunch of reasons, but once the Sisters found out that it’s illegal to eat a steak there the Sisters said nope. Nope. A five-year prison sentence. Seriously. There is no risk whatsoever that we’ll ever become vegetarians. We know that’s incongruous with our deep and abiding love of fuzzy creatures, but it’s the truth. We never, ever name our food and we’re firmly entrenched in the belief that our steaks sprang from Zeus’s loins sliced and wrapped in styrofoam. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. All hell is breaking loose in Mumbai over this issue. The Muslims and the Hindus are getting nasty over it. We know that’s shocking, that people would be fighting over religious beliefs. Wait, it’s coming… It has to be said… Go ahead and grimace… Don’t have a cow, man.

2. Crazy old men. Harrison Ford crashed his airplane yesterday. You probably heard about it. There was a ripple in the Force. It seems that he’s going to be alright, but we freaked out a bit there especially with this coming so soon after losing another old crush. Consequently, we have a few things to say to the gentlemen of Hollywood. Why must you run around like this? Why? Can’t you just be happy watching Netflicks like the rest of the world? What did Calista Lockhart have to say when the hospital called? We hope she reamed you good, sir, because we can’t handle anything happening to Han Solo or Indiana Jones after Spock left us this week.

3. Other places we’re not going. Dateline: Kathmandu. Mount Everest to be exact. Apparently, there is so much human poop sitting around at the base camps that it’s become unhealthy. EWWWW!! Since people have been climbing the mountain since 1953 they’ve been pooping there, too. That totally makes sense, but we have never spent one single second thinking about that. Amylynn has some sort of weird fascination with Mount Everest ever since she read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Ava doesn’t get it because if there’s one thing Amylynn detests it’s the outside. We need to get with Amylynn’s Uncle Lee who’s been to Base Camp and inquire as to his recollections. If that little boy from earlier forgets his homework again, we might send him and a shovel to Nepal for punishment.

4. We love Canadians. And not just because of hockey, but that continues to make us happy. We love them because, although they are quiet up there and exceedingly polite, they are subversively funny. Take for instance the latest trend from North of the border. In a delightful salute to the passing of Leonard Nimoy they are doctoring their five-dollar bills by adding pointy ears, slashy eyebrows, and Starfleet insignia. We love it. We also found a Canadian bill transformed into Severus Snape! Our hearts went pitter pat! We tried it with Abraham Lincoln but it totally doesn’t translate.

5. Glorious, glorious new cars. Ava got a new car!! Carly the Cadillac has been demoted to the kid’s car. Meet Jax the Jaguar. When she sent Amylynn a picture of the magnificent beast, it was merely a pipe dream. All it took was one long week of pointed comments, begging, sighing, threatening, reasonable arguments, and more sighing for the dream to become a reality. Finally Ed said yes. Probably cause he was worn down and tired of hearing about it already. Amylynn can hardly wait to start driving a Jaguar! Wait, you say. Didn’t Ava get the car? Yep! Like we said, Amylynn can hardly wait to start driving a Jaguar!

You know what I hate? Jacked up computers.

You know what I love? Helpful tech people who don’t irritate me and who fix the problem right away.

If you pop back on here, thank you Paul Jayson Flores. You’re a prince among Tech Support! It’s a rare event when I’m not murderous after working with tech support.

If you ever want to really piss off a bank teller I suggest taking a bag of change and dropping it on her counter. Follow that up by saying, “I think I have $11 dollars here.”

Sassy insisted that she wanted to sell candy for school when that soul sucking fund raiser came up. For those of you with no children, I assure you, school fundraisers are the bane of our existence.

Anyway, she came home with a box of 40 candy bars. When the nightmare ended, there were a few dollars shoved in the envelope – no doubt from the few her father and I bought upon her pleading. There was also a crap load of coins in there. Regardless of all of that, I still had to write a check for $29.

I went to the bank because my purse was so heavy I was leaning to the left. I’m certain that shoulder is an inch lower than the other one. If I didn’t cash it in for bills I was going to develop a hump.

The teller gave me a look over her reader glasses, took a deep breath, and started counting. For some reason she didn’t want to take my word for that $11 figure.

Do I not seem totally trustworthy?

I was much saddened to hear Leonard Nimoy died. Spock was always my favorite character. My dad and I used to watch Star Trek reruns on Saturday when I was a kid. Also, we looooooved In Search Of…

So, I was sad. And then I saw this.

Brilliant. Delightful. I’ll miss him.

Amylynn spent a very long, exhausting day traveling from Dallas to Tucson. There was snow and ice and apparently that makes the people of Texas lose their ever loving minds. It took two and a half hours to drive just over twelve miles. Huge sections of the freeway were closed all together. The parts that were still open was often at a stand still. Then the airport was a complete zoo. Still, her flight was one of the last ones that got out of Dallas before they were shut down. Even then, she sat in the airplane on the tarmac for another two hours before we even got in the air. Surprisingly, most people were in a decent mood considering how awful the day was. Amy sat next to an old guy who told her everything there was to know about de-icing planes. Normally, this would annoy the hell out of her, but he was actually pretty cute in an adorably ancient sort of way. She read and

Run llama, run!

entire book in the four hours she sat there. Plus, there were coyotes on the tarmac which was weird. Nevertheless, she’s thrilled to be back in the nice warm desert – where the normal coyotes live. With plenty of time to read the newspapers in the airport, we found lots to report.

1. Animals being free. The nation was apparently captivated when two llamas got loose in Sun City, AZ. We can assure you we’d have been captivated, too. We love llamas. You’d love llamas, too, if you could catch one. That’s the thing about llamas – can’t catch ’em. Who knew that llamas would be so adorable while on a freedom run? During the same week, the citizens in Tilton, New Hampshire were made aware of two horses on a freedom run. Stanly and Aramis got out of their enclosure by hiking over snow banks and over a fence. By the way, we strongly approve of naming a horse after a Musketeer. The owners were notified by telephone that their horses were across the street, frolicking in the parking lot. Once again, the Sisters were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

2. A million dollar ticket to stink. Heard of Burning Man? It’s a delirious festival that happens in the middle of the Nevada desert wherein thousands of people don’t shower for days on end and take a bunch of drugs while setting giant effigies on fire. Or something like that. Anyway, scalpers are selling tickets to it for a million dollars on Stub Hub. We have concerns. If you really must attend this thing, why don’t you just wander in out of the desert? It seems to us that if you really, really want to hang around with a bunch of stinky people there are a lot of cheaper ways to do it.

3. Utah needs some excitement. One of the most delightful things about staying in hotels is that they always give you a free copy of USA Today. That’s the only time we ever read it. It’s got this great section where they list a story from every single state. This is the entire article from the Utah section: During a recent family outing, Kaitlyn Elder, 13, spotted a white deer, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. That’s it. Seriously. Is the spotting of a white deer in Utah similar to spotting a white buffalo? Or a unicorn? What the hell is that all about? Oh, we get it. Kaitlyn Elder was blind and suddenly regained her sight and everyone in Utah knew the shorthand for this story. That’s our working theory.

4. Bringing your own snacks. The airlines don’t feed you any more. Actually, that’s not true. They’ll happily sell you a crappy bagel and a wee red delicious apple for $36. That means people have been bringing their own snacks on board. You know, like sandwiches or cookies. Or like the guy who sat in 13E who ate his fingernails for the entire flight. It was captivating in a completely disgusting sort of way. But then again, he got all kinds of extra protein from his snack and probably has the highest immunity of anyone on the plane since he ingested all those traveling germs.

5. Boarding agents with a sense of humor. These people have to deal with a lot of nasty customers. Not Amylynn of course. She was perfectly lovely to everyone – for a change. The gate agent in Dallas was delightfully charming while he tried to convince everyone to put down their pitchforks cause it’s impossible to kill Mother Nature. Or God. Or whatever god is in charge of ice storms. There at the end the American Airlines guy pleaded for everyone to get on the plane as quickly as possible because if they could pull the plane away from the gate with us on it, we had a good chance of getting out of there. Since that’s what we all wanted – desperately – we got the hell on the plane. And it worked. We were one of the last ones out. Thank you anonymous but cheerful gate dude!

Friday, February 27th is National Polar Bear Day. You know what to do.