So whatcha gonna do? Do you wanna get down?

Okay, first things first: the Andrea Seigel book signing/dance extravaganza? Fabulous. Too funny for words, this girl is. I left there totally inspired, which is great, except that my creative juices were not mixing up fresh prose for me to rush home and jot down, but rather visions of a dance for my own book tour...

I see three of us (Coffee Girl has agreed to dance backup, and I'm thinking of some sort of audience participation option where we'll pick dancer #3 from whoever shows up that night willing to wow me with her kick-ball-change). We'll start with a moment of tribute to Andrea, to thank her for planting this little seed of inspiration - some bendy-arm swaying to "You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings," or perhaps something by Josh Groban. There will have to be a tour jete at some point, because that's just what you do when you're dancing to earnest music and wanting to convey deep meaning and emotion. In the dance world, deep meaning = tour jete.

After the tribute, we'll segue into some smooth grooves by Kool & the Gang, then maybe end with something funky by Gwen Stefani. I've pretty much ruled out the baton twirling option due to low ceilings (although it might work in one of those Barnes & Noble stores with an escalator) And I guess if we really wanted to incorporate the twirling, we could always have a parade...

Anyway, I've got much creative work to do between now and Spring 2008! In the meantime, buy Andrea's book; I'm halfway through it and totally intrigued.

Second of all, in further news of book activities that do not in any way involve writing, I had my first author photo shoot yesterday. I've been working out for two months in anticipation of this event, losing exactly 1 and 1/8 pounds.

Two observations:

1.) Oprah is right. It takes a whole swarm of people to make those "casual" pictures happen (a huge shout out to the artistic talents of Ivan the photographer, Andrea my hair stylist, and Val the genius makeup artist. If you're in the Boston area and need highlights or hints on mascara application, go see Andrea and Val at Jacqui's Design Group. I love these women). When you see my picture, feel free to think I look like that all the time :)

2.) Models who complain about how tough their job is should be shipped off to serve French fries in an airport fast-food joint. Modeling is fabulous (and I spent half the day covered in mosquitos and batting my eyelashes at construction workers hoping they wouldn't kick us out of the VERY closed park). You get to wear cute clothes, spend your day with a whole team of people whose sole focus is to make you look better than you ever could on your own, and then another whole team devoted to telling you how great you look and capturing it on film, creating tangible proof that yes, indeed, you look that good. Yep, I can see why that would be stressful.

Anyway, we get to see the pictures tomorrow afternoon - once I've photoshopped out the mosquito bites, I'll post a couple here. If you have other ideas for either my dance soundtrack or where ungrateful models might go to gain perspective on their job situation, let me know!