SO yesterday involved these wondrous Omaha-ian activities:

-- Hanging out with the glorious artiste Wanda Ewing, who took us to her house and showed us her artwork, which involves things like these gorgeous pin-ups on wallpaper



and the art she owns and fills her house with, including this DEEP FRIED BARBIE by Brett Reif



and latch-hook pin-ups by Whitney Lee.

Wanda took Joi, Krysztof and me to Louie M's Burger Lust, which stole all of our hearts, as you can see in this photo of Wanda and me



and then we left her and visited scooter shops and bookstores and our byoooteous hostess ALICE KIM's Omaha shop TROCADERO, which is chock-full of wonders and glamour -- shoes and notecards and purses and chocolates and makeup and plates and jewelry (bracelets with bird's nests!) and really, it's like a jewelry case flung open. I exercised extreme restaint and acquired only this extremely fashionable necklace.. please do not be too jealous. It does have starfish and shells hanging from it, as well as a huge glittery fake gem. Oh and I also bought some very very glittery nailpolish and eye shimmer.

I know.



So then we had wine and snacks with Alice at LA BUVETTE, which is as I've mentioned the best wine bar ever, and then we rushed off to BARNES & NOBLE. This B&N as I've mentioned has made Godmother its hand sell pick of the month and has sold like 100 copies of it so far and has, right at this moment, about 70 copies displayed right as you walk in. Look:



Please keep in mind that almost every other B&N in this country has about 4 or 5 copies on hand, many on display tables up front along with other new releases... and this one has SEVENTY. And makes announcements about the book like 4 times a day on the loudspeaker. It is quite amazing. Apparently, this all came about because a customer named MARTHA picked up Godmother as soon as it got to the store, read it, and recommended it to the manager, STEPHANEE, who then made it the pick of the month. Here I am with Martha and Stephanee:



And here is Joi with the very passionate and awesome community relations manager MARCIA, who arranged the event:



And here is my old friend Kelly with the novelist Timothy Schaffert, whose house we all went to after for champagne and who told us about his amazing-sounding new book about a missing child who may or may not actually exist:



And here is Alice with Bill, an Omaha-ian who had emailed me about Godmother and then came out last night with his VERY CUTE niece and nephew:



It was so casual I ended up not reading at all, just meeting staff and customers and signing all them books, and it was totally lovely and obviously Omaha is the best city ever.

Today we head back to Kansas City for FONDUE and ROLLER DERBY.

The end.